Publishing 4 Years of Field Work

Cite | Brendan Andolsek Bradley. The next act: Evaluating tools and envisioning the future of VR theatre. Journées d'informatique théâtrale, Oct 2024, Avignon, France. ⟨hal-05176640⟩

Last year, I was invited to deliver the keynote at The Theatrical Computer Science Days, hosted by Avignon University. When they asked to publish my remarks in a technical journal, I proposed something even more ambitious: the chance to formally expand, refine, and cite my work from the past several years, specifically, the design and performance of over 50 original live performance prototypes using extended reality (XR) technologies for ticketed audiences around the world.

What began as an artistic experiment is now part of the scientific record. Immersive theater meets computer science. And I could not be more grateful to all the collaborators, partners, and mentors I have worked with in this emerging medium… many of whom I wanted to make sure were properly credited in my paper.

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I consider myself a lifelong advocate of staging theatre in weird spaces. From producing my first play as a teenager when my high school tore down its auditorium; to turning to a brand new website called YouTube to create “theater with a camera.” I even founded The Innovation Lab at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts to foster the integration of new technology into the performing arts curriculum.

During the covid shutdown, I began releasing tools and tutorials for performers stuck at home to get back “on stage” with limited access to funding or equipment. This led to partnerships and consultations with institutions I had long admired, such as Actors Theatre of Louisville, Roundabout Theatre Company, The Drama League, Theatre Communications Group, TheatreworksUSA, and culminating in a one man show commissioned by The Museum of Science, where I demonstrated five real-time technologies.

The most compelling of these showcases was a virtual 3D playhouse I released for free using the open-source webVR platform, Mozilla Hubs (which has since shut down). “In 2020, The Future Stages functioned as a digital twin, designed in Blender…with the goal of mirroring familiar, real-world Scenography.” [hal-05176640 §4, pg 5] This allowed anyone to join or host their own customizable virtual venue at a unique web address where attendees could navigate a 3D space using their arrow keys and mouse.

Within a month, myself and other theatremakers were staging productions inside The Future Stages and similar multi-user virtual platforms. “On October 4, 2020, my first virtual reality performance, Jettison, enabled three actors (each located in a different city) to cohabitate a shared virtual simulation: a boat floating in an open ocean environment.” We were Finalists for The Producer Guild of America’s Innovation Award and invited to present and publish at SIGGRAPH. But our greatest success was finding the small handful of other artists around the world doing similar work to hack gaming platforms and engines to create live theatre.

I was a founding member of both The 5th Wall Forum and OnBoardXR, which were accelerators for early-stage live arts prototypes using VR / XR, 360 video, spatial audio, motion tracking, and even artificial intelligence. This supported dozens of world premieres and hundreds of artists giving them access to resources, mentorship, career advancement, audience and revenue. And as venues began to reopen, I was eager to see how these creations and communities built online could be integrated back onto physical stages.

Two of the longest artistic collaborations of my career have come from this exploration. I am one of the most frequent repertory actors for the acclaimed Ferryman Collective theatre company in VR Chat, starring in their productions of Welcome To Respite, Gumball Dreams, Uncanny Alley, Real Time Live!, and assisting in conferences and live demos which require streaming the in-world performance to external screens or video platforms. And separately, I have traveled the world to stage my own original musical theatre performances for hybrid audiences in virtual reality, black box studios, cinemas, art galleries, conference halls, and IMAX / dome theaters.

Unintentionally, I have become one of the only humans in the world who has treaded the boards, wearing a head mounted display, puppeting digital avatars and serenading a seated audience. And I’ve learned a lot about how (and how not) to engage multiple types of audiences through virtual story worlds.

The Festival d'Avignon is the oldest arts festival in France, held each summer in the city of Avignon. In recent years, Avignon University has hosted a dedicated section of the festival focused on emerging technologies and experimental performance.

In the summer of 2023, I helped bring both Ferryman Collective’s Gumball Dreams and my own virtual reality musical Non-Player Character to the festival, virtually. Working alongside the university’s programmers, we streamed and projected both webcam feeds of the live performers and in-game animation to audiences in France (from over 9,000 kilometers away).

So when the Theatrical Computer Science Days (Journées d'informatique théâtrale, JIT) was to bring it’s next session of researchers together at Avignon University to discuss modern applications of computers as a means of expression in artistic approach…my name came up.

I’m deeply grateful to Dr. Cyrielle Garson and Dr. Rémi Ronfard for inviting me to deliver the keynote address at Journées Informatique Théâtrale (JIT) and for generously peer-reviewing my 30-page research retrospective. The paper explores how immersive performance techniques can be framed within recognized performing arts training and methodologies.

I sincerely hope this document serves both as a training syllabus and a historical archive for those studying or practicing during this pivotal era of digitally-integrated live performance.

You can check it out or share it using HAL, the French open archive for the dissemination of scientific research documents, under the catalogue number: hal-05176640.