The Royal Shakespeare Company Paves Way For Virtual Reality Theater

Mark Quartley as Ariel in the RSC’s ‘The Tempest.’[+][-]

(Photo: Topher McGrillis)

Arthur C. Clarke once said: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

If that’s true, then the Royal Shakespeare Company is well on its way to casting actual spells over its audiences.

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.

“It’s not just cutting edge,” says Sarah Ellis, the RSC director of digital development. “It’s bleeding edge technology.”

The collaboration itself sounds charmed. The RSC’s artistic director Gregory Doran wanted to explore The Tempest‘s masque scene, in which the wizard Prospero conjures spirits and gods. In Shakespeare’s day, such a masque would have showcased the latest tech to create these illusions. Doran felt the same should hold true in 2017.

So Ellis sent him one of Intel’s virtual reality (VR) demos. In it, a digital whale “swims” through a real auditorium, full of real people, in real time. It was just the kind of thing Doran was looking for.

Ellis reached out to Intel (“I literally sent an email to their customer service,” she laughs), and got an enthusiastic response from Tawny Schlieski, who’d been working on VR and AR (augmented reality) storytelling tools for several years.

“I was really excited about building a solution that would stand up for eight shows a week, a three month run, and a move to London,” she explains. “That sort of durability was something that we had not really accomplished yet.”

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.”

So Intel got to push their tech to its limits, The Imaginarium fulfilled a long-held goal, and the RSC staked its claim as one of the entertainment world’s leading innovators. All in all, a tidy techno hat-trick.

So: does the result measure up to the promise?

The performance I saw in Stratford was as much a showcase for the tech’s shortcomings as its progress. Ariel’s grand entrance was marred by a buggy leg-sensor, causing his avatar to do the can-can for several minutes, and his appearance later as a massive harpy had similar issues with the wings clipping back and forth through the character’s head.

But when it worked, it worked beautifully. 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.

Everyone involved acknowledged the hiccups. Far from being deterred, they’re encouraged. All three partners – the RSC, Intel, and The Imaginarium – see The Tempest as the first of many, many steps along the path of entwining tech and live performance.

Perhaps the most exciting is the possibility of looping back to its original inspiration: virtual and augmented reality (AR) storytelling.

Though now focused on the upcoming mo-cap film Animal Farm, Imaginarium studio head Ben Lumsden is already brainstorming applications.

“Live stage shows,” he says, are just the beginning. “Site-specific theatre could be interesting. Live road shows, rock music, theme parks, arcades – you can actually go anywhere with it. [Any] narrative entertainment space.”

With a grin, he repeats: ”Site-specific augmented reality theatre is going to be massive.”

Visual artists are already exploring this idea. Josue Abraham’s recent show at Mexico’s Galeria Medira featured AR installations, like sculptures that come to life if viewed through your smartphone.  Imagine exploring a traditional portrait gallery where the paintings talk to you, a la Harry Potter, once you put on your Google Daydream.

Facebook is experimenting with this, too. After purchasing the VR company Oculus for $2 billion, and thereby jumpstarting the massive VR rush in Silicon Valley, they’ve been working on a proprietary VR space. Mark Zuckerberg recently revealed a demo: digital avatars of Facebook friends sharing videos, playing games, chatting in realtime.

The challenge for theater is overcoming VR’s isolating nature. Anyone who’s tried out an Oculus, Vive, or any other headset knows how clunky they are. Live performance is, by nature, a communal experience: we sit together in the dark, witnessing something that connects us through a shared catharsis. Barricading yourself with goggles and headphones kind of defeats the purpose.

But the companies behind The Tempest are optimistic. And they’re markedly devoted to the idea of disseminating these ideas to other designers, artists, and performers.

“We’re playing with a kit that’s about $1,000 right now,” Schlieski says, geared toward smaller theaters and individual artists. “It shouldn’t be a rarefied experience for just Broadway or the Royal Shakespeare Company.”

Producers may be excited about another application. Theater confronts the same problem as the fast food industry: just as the stomach can only fit so much food, so can each theater only fit so many bodies. It essentially caps revenue, which has lead to skyrocketing prices to compensate for inflation.

A possible VR remedy? Charge for virtual tickets. Essentially, turn one performance into two: one for the live audience, the other for a virtual one – sitting in the same “seats”, experiencing the same show, surrounded by the avatars of all their digital peers. One could even choose to sit onstage.

Lumsden imagines this as a modern equivalent of attending the Venetian opera: dress up, put on a mask, wear even louder costumes than the actors themselves. Customizing your VR theater avatar would give “people-watching” a whole new meaning.

The educational applications are enticing as well, and of particular interest to the Royal Shakespeare Company.

“We reached 530,000 children across the country,”  says Catherine Mallyon, the RSC’s executive director. She’s referring to a recent tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which RSC actors collaborated with twelve different theater companies throughout the UK. “That’s through partnerships with regional theaters, with schools, teaching teachers. There’s a very real presence beyond [Stratford-Upon-Avon].”

Along with the rest of the RSC, she is hoping The Tempest becomes another way to reach kids – before grammar school can snuff out their love of the Bard.

Imagine being able to stream yourself into a performance: sit next to Simon Russell Beale, pause the action, walk around the stage to get a better look, listen to commentary from Doran, physically explore the text and the set. Maybe Ariel’s avatar interacts with yours, shows you how to cast a spell, become part of the masque.

But educational impact goes beyond the virtual classroom. The RSC is one of 663 organizations that receive funding from the UK’s Arts Council, which distributes a total of £1 billion every three years (the RSC tends to receive about £15 million each year). It has other revenue streams, of course – donations, tickets sales, and a cut of the profits from its megahit musical Matilda, which just closed on Broadway but is still selling out in London.

Still, the subsidy is significant: it makes up about a quarter of the yearly revenue, and is not guaranteed. The RSC applies for it every three years, just like all other 662 companies. Having a robust educational component is not only a personal goal of Mallyon and the rest of the leadership; it’s also a major component of the application process, and one of the RSC’s mission statements.

Because of the company’s 92-year history, its educational focus, and its economic impact (it generates between £50 and £75 million yearly for Stratford-Upon-Avon alone), Arts Council funding is likely to stay strong.

“It’s easier to look forward a long way if you’ve got a long tail behind you,” Mallyon says with a twinkle.

The company’s place as both pioneer and progenitor may also be an anchor for Britons as they navigate the stormy Brexit passage. No one is particularly clear on what will happen next, how it it will affect funding, or education. But Mallyon is confident in the RSC’s role moving forward.

“Places of congregation,” she says firmly, coming back to our talk about shared rituals. “We’ll have to play a really important part in showing how positive they are, for all sorts of people. We’ll carry on.”

One can almost hear the “keep calm” in her statement, and it’s impossible not to feel a little more grounded.

The potential for real magic doesn’t hurt, either.

[For those who can't make it to Stratford-Upon-Avon, The Tempest will be broadcast live in UK cinemas starting Jan 11, and then in the US throughout March. Screening info here].