In MWM Immersive’s Chained: A Victorian Nightmare, you’ll find yourself alone, knocking on a large, ornate door. Then, you’ll be greeted by a performer and asked to come inside. You’ll sit down at a desk in a dusty-looking old study in Victorian England with books and ledgers and a mirror.
After a little bit of conversation, the performer will ask you if you’re ready to cross over. In other words: it’s time to put the headset on. Because this no ordinary immersive theatre experience—it’s also virtual reality.
Unlike most other VR experiences, immersive VR theatre allows audience members to interact inside of VR in real time with both performers and physical objects to create a sense of deep immersion and presence. This is no solo, isolating endeavor. Participants typically enter a real, physical set that maps to what they’re observing inside the VR goggles. The participant may be tethered during their VR experience or able to “roam free” during these kinds of experiences by wearing a backpack. As an attendee, you can also interact with your environment using the most natural controller of them all: your body. You may be asked to sit on furniture (which appears in the headset virtually) or be asked to hold objects in your hands (which also are mapped in the headset). You may even hold a conversation with a live character, able to both hear a real human voice and respond with your own. Everything happens in real time and has a 1:1 correlation with what you’re seeing in the VR. What you see may often be low resolution or feel ever-so-slightly “off” due to technical constraints, but remains believable.
This physical mapping as well as the potential for human interaction — through movement, touch and speech — within an imaginary world brings the “liveness” and intimacy of immersive theatre into the virtual, one which can defy the rules of reality when needed; you may grow to the size of a giant, pass through solid walls, or fly through the night sky while within the VR, sans constraints that typical immersive theatre must deal with.
It’s this combination of a built installation; live performers; tracked props; sensory tricks like heat, wind, vibration, and smell; plus use of your voice, hands, and feet all combined with cutting-edge technology which allows participants to feel as if what they’re seeing and feeling is real — ideally even forgetting they have a headset on in the first place.
Why mix immersive theatre and virtual reality?
Marie Jourdren, Creative Director at DVgroup, said that their experiences Alice, The Virtual Reality Play and The Horrifically Real Virtuality were created out of a desire to push the medium beyond 360-degree films.
Says Jourdren, “I had the intuition that we could push the immersion in a story much further by offering the audience a fully interactive universe.”
“This meant that the audience had to be able to physically move around in a tangible space and leave their status as a ghost or omniscient audience member to actively participate in the narrative and interact with the characters in the story.”
For Ethan Stearns of MWM Immersive, who created Chained: A Victorian Nightmare with Justin Denton, it was about creating new, believable worlds.
“Live actors create a human connection even within the ethereal world of Chained, and the physical set further grounds the guest in that world. In a day and age full of distractions, smartphones, and social media chief among them, it’s incredible how actual human interactivity and physical connection can pull people into a story and encourage them to get totally lost in it,” Stearns said.
“Ultimately, we want the technology to be invisible, so all the guest sees is this amazing virtual world and feels like they’re there.”
Bringing the physical world into the virtual world
Some of the most memorable moments in immersive VR theatre performances which I’ve seen involve surprises using the physical set.
I remember looking up in awe as I sat on a real bed during Jack: Part One by Mathias Chelebourg and Baobab Studios, a retelling of the classic Jack and the Beanstalk fable. I physically felt the world rumbling around me as the beanstalk sprouted. The night sky came into view as the roof of the house blew off. Was that a cool breeze on my forehead? I then looked over in surprise and saw a “real” coffee pot tumble to the floor. I not only saw the object fall in VR, but I heard the physical clang on the floor as the object hit the ground and rolled away.
I also witnessed a jaw-dropping human moment during the “VR vérité” experience HERO by iNKStories, which allows participants to witness firsthand the effects of a bombing in a Syrian town. Right after the bombing, spray of debris fell against my back as the screen inside the goggles went pure white from smoke. Then, after the smoke cleared, a voice cried out in the distance for help. I moved towards the sound and as I neared a pile of rubble, I reached out to lift a bar in an attempt to free a victim of the attack. As I grabbed the bar, I felt another hand grab back. I still remember the moment of surprise I felt, having completely forgotten I was in a virtual experience.
In Chained: A Victorian Nightmare, not only are the performers and the furniture real (pro tip: go stand near the fireplace) but the props are, too. A ghostly figure takes you to a room with a dinner feast on the table and asks you to hold an apple — it becomes the focal point of the experience for a few moments, and feels surprisingly like a real apple.
Says Stearns, “We wanted to focus on sensory effects tied to the story… We found that those objects that were tied to the story were the most interesting to the user and the most rewarding when their physicality was revealed. The apple was a special challenge because we wanted to user to hold the apple in their hands without feeling any of the tracking markers we need to use to map it to VR. So we custom-made a plastic apple with active tracking markets embedded on the inside. In the same way we thought about furniture as parts of the story, the apple was important.”
“It existed at the center of the story and needed to look right inside the virtual world and feel right in the guest’s hands.”
So often in these experiences, feeling can be synonymous with believing, even more so than seeing.
In Alice, the Virtual Reality Play, DVgroup took this notion even further. They incorporated real food to be held and consumed in the experience. This request posed significant challenges in asking each person to eat something in real life that they could only “see” virtually. However, given that the source text of their experience came from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, tasks around eating and drinking seemed to fit the narrative perfectly, said Jourden.
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In Alice, the Caterpillar character first challenges the audience member (who personifies “Alice”) to prove their worthiness in becoming Queen through demonstrating a talent (participants would often sing or dance ); afterwards, the Caterpillar then offers the participant a meringue mushroom to eat to “help them grow up.” Accepting the mushroom would trigger environmental changes in the show, causing the virtual set to become smaller and smaller as the participant “grew” in size.
Says Jourdren, the offering of the mushroom from a character to the participant was like “if a stranger were asking you to blindfold yourself and eat what he was going to put in your mouth.” There was a huge amount of trust involved in the exchange. After focusing on the physiological and narrative aspects of the experience, DVgroup were able to design the story and subsequent dialogue in a way to convince users to trust the Caterpillar, especially if the audience member hesitated at first. (Overall, they found that out of a thousand performances, only one participant refused to each the meringue mushroom.)
Real time acting in VR poses new challenges for performers
In experiences like MWM Immersive’s Chained and Mathias Chelebourg’s Jack: Part One, the performer engages the participant in conversation in VR, leading to a unique performance for every single person and a lot of unpredictability from attendee to attendee. While in the future creators may choose to use artificial intelligence to create believable characters within VR, most presently choose to go with a live actor in these types of experiences.
Says Stearns of MWM Immersive, “Although we are fascinated by AI, it’s amazing how trusting you become as an audience member when you realize you are in a room with a real person. Even if that person is wearing a costume or is completely transformed into a virtual character, their very presence changes the dynamic of the viewer. Artificial intelligence will continue to get better and better, but that doesn’t change how we feel when we are present and performing with another real human.”
Performing in pieces like Chained relies not only upon improv and immersive theatre performance skills but also adapting to unfamiliar technical constraints. Cutting-edge technology allows experiences to have real-time body animation of an avatar that can be presented to the user in the headset. To achieve this end, actors perform while wearing complex motion capture equipment. Quite often, the performer is in a bulky helmet equipped with a camera that allows their facial expressions to be mapped to the virtual world in real time. Wearing this helmet is in addition to having dozens of trackers placed on the actor’s body to capture movement and gestures. And even though the performer is “present” in the VR with the audience, they can’t necessarily see the world from the precisely same perspective as the audience, particularly if there are multiple participants interacting at the same time.
Samantha Gorman and Tanya Leal Soto of Tender Claws (Virtual Virtual Reality) compare the act of performing within VR to puppetry in their current project. Their team has collaborated with experimental theatre troupe Piehole on The Under Presents, which ran sneak peek previews to members of the press during Sundance and is coming to Oculus Quest later this year. In this piece, participants find themselves aboard a magical, time-bending ship known as ‘The Under.’ When actors appear as characters within The Under Presents, performers are not only interacting with players within the VR but also controlling aspects of the virtual experience through their own user interface, composed of various wheels and menus. For example, actors within The Under Presents have the ability to pull players aside for one-on-one moments, as well as teleport participants from one location to another.
Says Soto, “Normally, actors split attention between the audience, their surroundings, their character: bringing that all together is what allows a performance to come to life.” By adding another level of complexity, she likens this to “expanding those points of focus,” as the actor must improvise reactions to participants while also making sure they abide by the world’s internal logic and rules and run actions through their custom interface.
The importance of having performers well-versed in improvisational techniques is echoed by Jourdren of DVgroup as a key ingredient in making sure the audience remains immersed and present in the VR experience. She says, their actors “must follow the narrative framework and respect the psychological profile of the character they embody, but are free to react as they wish to the actions and words of the audience, according to their own sensitivity and creativity.”
“Their improvisational skills are a key element for the success of the narrative experience and an extremely powerful immersion factor. This also guarantees a very strong personalization of the story for each spectator.”
Familiar live stage structures and techniques also appear in this kind of work, but adapted for such a unique setting. In order to keep things running smoothly during the experience, DVgroup relies upon three separate “crews” on stage: “a ‘ninja’ (who moves the physical set elements and guarantees the safety of the viewers in their movements); the ‘hosts’ (who first equip the viewers with the VR equipment and ensure everything is functioning correctly during the onboarding); and the ‘backstage master’ (the developer in the control room who follows everything that happens in the virtual universe on the control screens).”
I’ve also personally witnessed performers masterfully improvise within VR and kill time as these hidden crew members dart around participants to troubleshoot technical glitches; the show, as they say, must go on.
But certain efficiencies can also be found through acting in VR. The experience Chained allows a single performer to become multiple characters seamlessly during the same performance. Chained is a riff on the classic Dickens tale A Christmas Carol and a single actor embodies multiple characters like the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. Their physical appearances within the VR morph significantly from spirit to spirit during the same story. I might have assumed I was interacting with four or five different actors if I hadn’t known otherwise! Similarly, in Jack: Part One by Mathias Chelebourg and Baobab Studios, the same single performer plays both the parts of a “frog mother” as well as a “junk trader” in the same narrative, even though their appearances, movements, and speaking styles were quite different.
Immersive VR theatre experiences can write scripts with this kind of structure in mind from the get go, in a world where the costume changes can be quick and entirely virtual.
Where to from here?
Until very recently, these immersive VR theatre experiences have been limited to film festivals and other pop-ups, running for a few days or weeks, with only a few lucky people getting to experience them, assuming all of the technology is working smoothly. For example, an experience like Chained only takes one person every 30 minutes at $50 a ticket.
“I think we will see more creators make experiences like this in the future, at galleries, theaters, and any other place that can host this kind of build-out,” says Stearns. Case in point: after a sold out run in Los Angeles, Chained is currently running in New York City at a pop-up arcade hosted by the Future of Storytelling.
“It’s not easy to make something like Chained, but I think the challenges will become easier over time,” says Stearns.
So despite limited throughput, unreliable technology, and high cost, is there a more permanent future in store, one that’s accessible to the general public at a reasonable price point? Jourdren says she too looks towards other locations that can host this type of experience, particularly towards the possible development of a permanent network of venues dedicated to this kind of work — with a programming strategy based on the models of traditional theatres. “We are currently in discussion with several international partners,” she says. The Horrifically Real Virtuality is expected to tour later on this year.
She added, “I deeply believe that we are at the dawn of something revolutionary, which reminds me of the early days of cinema. The feeling of being a pioneer, a mad inventor at the same time, all this is really exciting.”
So wherever immersive VR theatre takes us next, it seems like we’re all in for a wild ride.
The Horrifically Real Virtuality by DVgroup is currently performing at the Phi Centre in Montreal through April 28 and is expected to tour later this year.
Chained: A Victorian Nightmare by MWM Immersive is currently showing in New York City at the Future of Storytelling Story Arcade pop-up through April 21.
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