The Royal Shakespeare Company Paves Way For Virtual Reality Theater
In partnership with Intel and The Imaginarium, the RSC is pioneering a new kind of storytelling tech, using Shakespeare's The Tempest as a guinea pig. In it, they are creating the world's first live motion-capture performance. Think Gollum from The Lord Of The Rings - except onstage, live, and chatting you up in real-time.
The result is a character that is part flesh, part digital wizardry - a perfect match for The Tempest's Ariel, the fairy whose magic wreaks havoc on a shipwrecked crew.
It's created by twenty-seven separate projectors hidden around the theater. The actor playing Ariel, Mark Quartley, is onstage at all times, and embedded in his costume are seventeen motion sensors. When Ariel needs to perform magic, a virtual avatar appears, tracking his movements, flying around the stage, transmogrifying itself to fit the story's needs.
Then came The Imaginarium, one of the world's leading motion-capture companies, who were looking to develop live performances, not just "canned" film footage. Quartley describes the studio, founded by Gollum actor Andy Serkis, as, "this extraordinary blend of technical geekery and artistry."
The scene in which Prospero recalls Ariel's imprisonment inside a pine tree was mesmerizing. The mo-cap and projections combined to grow the tree up from the stage, engulfing him and creating a sort of living sculpture, halfway between a Tim Burton character and Donatello's Penitent Magdalene.
See the full story here; http://www.forbes.com/sites/leeseymour/2017/01/10/the-royal-shakespeare-company-is-paving-the-way-for-virtual-reality-theater/#64e7ede21657