“I regard the theatre as the greatest of all art forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being.” – Thornton Wilder.
It’s with this sentiment in mind, wholly embraced by the TheatAR team, that we embark on this very special project here at the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) this fall. As we were exposed to augmented reality technology over the last year, a group of us began imagining possibilities beyond the video games and computer desktop replacement scenarios that the tech seemed to be initially developed for. We posited the possibility of creating animated characters that could perform side-by-side with live human actors in a theatre performance. We daydreamed about translating the magic of a film like “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”—in which cartoon characters seamlessly share the screen with flesh-and-blood people—to the real world in real time, in front of an audience of (presumably) real people.
And thus our pitch project was born. The team behind TheatAR, in its first week of actual production, reconfirmed these principles and we dedicated ourselves to finding a compelling (public domain) story to adapt to this format, and set out to research the best possible augmented reality technology to use to achieve our vision.
Work at the ETC often involves the use of exciting and novel technology, and this project will be no exception. But one of our guiding principles is that the tech should always be used in service of the art. We are using augmented reality technology to further storytelling—to realize stories in ways previously impossible, rather than using technology for its own sake.
It won’t be easy. All of the currently-available tech still feels nascent and underdeveloped, and there is essentially no reference for figuring out how actors are supposed to interact with animated characters they can’t see on stage (in film they can have actors in green-screen suits digitally removed in post-production), but we were aware of these challenges when we decided to pursue the project. By the end of the semester, one way or another, we will be inviting an audience to attend our performance and the show must go on!
We couldn’t be more excited.