Enabling Virtual Theatre


We define Virtual Theatre as shared, live performance with participants contributing from different physical locales. The challenges of virtual theatre involve not only integrating technical components to enable such an experience, but doing so while maintaining aspects of theatrical performance (e.g. liveness, social presence, and perspective) that make it a particularly unique art form.

In this work, we present two technical frameworks for enabling  virtual theatre utilized on recent live productions:  a video based approach (The Canadian Wiggler) and a 3D Metaverse approach (Been Set Free).
Collaborators
  • David Munnell, Department of Performing Arts and Visual Culture, Rochester Institute of Technology 
  • Dan Roach, DJR Design
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    Publications

  • Joe Geigel. 2022. Enabling Virtual Theatre: Two Technical Approaches for Live Distributed Performance, In Proceedings of The 19th ACM SIGGRAPH European Conference on Visual Media Production (CVMP 2022), London, UK.   Dec 1-2, 2022.
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    Videos
    Preview of the Canadian Wiggler

    Teaser Trailer for ImagineRIT presentation of Been Set Free