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      ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Sprinkled With High-Tech Fairy Dust

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ Sprinkled With High-Tech Fairy DustA new online production from the Royal Shakespeare Company uses motion-capture and video game technology to create a virtual world.E.M. Williams performing in a motion-capture suit as Puck, in rehearsal for “Dream,” which will be performed live and streamed online starting Friday.Credit…Stuart Martin/Royal Shakespeare CompanyMarch 12, 2021, 7:29 a.m. ET“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” may be one of Shakespeare’s most performed plays — but its latest version from the Royal Shakespeare Company will be unlike any seen before. Titled “Dream,” the 50-minute streamed production fuses live performance with motion-capture technology, 3-D graphics, and interactive gaming techniques that let the audience remotely guide Puck through a virtual forest.As live theater sprinkled with some seriously high-tech fairy dust, “Dream” promises to bring “a most rare vision” of the play to our screens, to borrow a line from Shakespeare. It will be available to watch online once a day at various times from Friday through March 20.“It’s part of our ongoing engagement with this brave new world,” said Gregory Doran, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s artistic director. In 2016, the theater’s production of “The Tempest” used live motion-capture technology to create a 3-D digital avatar that was projected above the stage.The difference this time is that everything in the play — the performers and their surroundings — will be rendered virtually.A cast of seven will perform in a specially built studio in Portsmouth, southern England, wearing Lycra motion-capture suits outfitted with sensors. They will be surrounded by a 360-degree camera rig, made up of 47 cameras, with every movement almost instantaneously rendered by digital avatars, which are relayed to viewers via the stream. These magical figures move seamlessly through a computer-generated woodland, and the action is narrated in husky tones by the Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave as the forest’s voice.For audiences watching at home, the virtual fairies moving through a digital forest will look more like a video game or a CGI blockbuster than your average Royal Shakespeare Company show. But the performances are delivered live and in real time. Every night’s performance will be unique.With its abridged running time and a much-reduced cast of characters, “Dream” is not a full-scale production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; rather, it is a narrative inspired by it, focusing on Puck and the fairies. But don’t expect any cute digital wings: These are elemental, mysterious forces of nature.Naomi Gibbs, left, and Alex Counsell, right, fine-tune E.M. Williams’s motion-capture sensors.Credit…Stuart Martin/Royal Shakespeare CompanyThe arts collective Marshmallow Laser Feast, which works with virtual, mixed and augmented reality, has created digital avatars for the actors so they look sprung from the natural world. Puck is formed of pebbles and stones, while Titania’s fairies are made up of moth wings, cobwebs, earth or roots. The fairies are shape-shifters that coalesce into recognizable human and animal forms onscreen, and grow or shrink so that they are small enough to “creep into acorn-cups,” as Puck puts it.“It’s a form of puppetry,” said the Royal Shakespeare Company’s director of digital development, Sarah Ellis. “Those avatars come alive when they breathe, and how they breathe is through the live actor.”The software that drives the performance, called Unreal Engine, is used across the video games industry and is behind popular titles like “Gears of War” and “Fortnite.” Since 2013, the company that developed it, Epic Games, has been branching out to create interactive 3-D content with the tool for film and TV, and, increasingly, for live events such as music festivals, museum exhibitions and theater productions.Layering the tech with live performance, and relaying it instantly via a web player to thousands of devices, is an experiment for both Epic Games and the Royal Shakespeare Company. And then there’s the interactive component.Up to 2,000 audience members for each performance can become part of the show, and will be invited to guide Puck through the forest. Onscreen, the chosen spectators will appear as a cloud of tiny fireflies: By using their mouse, trackpad or finger on the screen of a smart device, they will be able to move their firefly around the screen, and Puck will follow their lead through the virtual space.“Without the fireflies — the audience — Puck wouldn’t be going anywhere,” said E.M. Williams, who plays the role. “The audience are very much the fuel, the energy, of the show.”Steve Keeley operating the technical platform in rehearsal.Credit…Stuart Martin/Royal Shakespeare CompanyIn a traditional stage production, the “tech” rehearsals come last, after weeks of work by the actors on character and narrative. For “Dream,” the process began with fittings for the motion-capture suits, so the players could calibrate their movements. Their digital avatars were refected on giant LED screens around the studio to orient the performers within the virtual environment.“It looks so 3-D, like it’s coming out the screen sometimes,” Williams said of the computer-generated forest. “There are times when if I touch it, I expect to feel it. It’s thinning the veil between the technological world and the real world.”The Royal Shakespeare Company has long been seen as a bastion of traditional British theater: reverent toward text and verse, powered by great actors. Did the company anticipate any resistance to its high-tech, experimental approach? Several reviewers said its motion-capture “Tempest” was gimmicky.“There’ll be some criticism, of course,” said Doran, the company’s artistic director. But, he added, he hoped “Dream” could speak to a traditional theater audience, as well as viewers drawn in by the technology.Besides, the genius of Shakespeare means his plays can take whatever new inventions are thrown at them. “It’s the same as an experimental production of any of these plays,” Doran said. “Shakespeare is robust: He’ll still be there.”DreamPresented online by the Royal Shakespeare Company, March 12-20; dream.online.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Theater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape Rooms

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }At HomeFall in Love: With TenorsConsider: Miniature GroceriesSpend 24 Hours: With Andra DayGet: A Wildlife CameraAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTheater to Stream: Star-Studded Digital Shorts and Escape RoomsThe past year has made us rethink the boundaries between theater and film. Many of these shows are a little bit of both.From left, Vicki Lee Taylor, Tom Bales, Marc Pickering, Ryan Pidgen and Kayleigh Thadani in a musical adaptation of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” at the Southwark Playhouse in London.Credit…Geraint LewisMarch 3, 2021It used to be easy to tell theater from film from streaming. The first was live, physical and by appointment; the others were not. But this past year has made us rethink definitions: Theater is not necessarily live or physical anymore, and film might be a little bit of both.Qui Nguyen, who is taking part in the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival. Credit…Bethany Mollenkof for The New York TimesIf anybody knows how to straddle the physical and virtual, it’s the playwright and screenwriter Qui Nguyen. On March 10, Nguyen, the author of the hit show “She Kills Monsters,” will participate in a Q. and A. for the New Ohio Theater’s NYC Indie Theater Film Festival — which will present over 30 pieces by theatermakers exploring new mediums. March 10-14; newohiotheatre.orgThe Young Vic in London inadvertently anticipated this change a few years ago by beginning to make digital companions to some of its shows, with crackerjack casts. Happily, they’re online for free. Directed by and starring Gillian Anderson, “The Departure” imagines Blanche DuBois in the few days before her fateful visit to Stella in “A Streetcar Named Desire.” Juliet Stevenson appears in “Mayday,” a postscript to Beckett’s “Happy Days”; while Hattie Morahan gives us a contemporary “Nora” in Carrie Cracknell and Nick Payne’s update of “A Doll’s House.” If you like Peter Brook jokes — and you well might if you are reading a column about theater — click on the dryly funny “The Roof,” whose cast includes Natalie Dormer, Noma Dumezweni, Jude Law and Ian McKellen as fans of the illustrious director. youngvic.org‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’During the past year, the Southwark Playhouse in London has emerged as a dynamic force in British theater, not letting lockdowns get in the way of new shows. After its well-received production of Philip Ridley’s “The Poltergeist,” Southwark is presenting the premiere of Richard Hough and Ben Morales Frost’s gender-flipped — and very, very loose — musical adaptation of the Goethe poem about a young inventor (now a girl, played by Mary Moore) who gets lost in magic. Through March 14; southwarkplayhouse.co.uk‘To the Moon’It’s unfortunate that Kathryn Grody has a lower professional profile than her husband, Mandy Patinkin, because she is a very fine actress in her own right. Here is a chance to watch her in action through the Creede Repertory Theater, a Colorado-based company with which Grody and Patinkin have a long history. She is slated to appear in Beth Kander’s docu-play about survivors of domestic violence. Live on March 5 and 6, then on demand March 15 through April 11; creederep.orgKathleen Chalfant, the star of “The Year of Magical Thinking.”Credit…Marc Deliz‘The Year of Magical Thinking’The pandemic has seen a surge in solo shows, for obvious reasons. Joan Didion’s adaptation of her memoir was a Broadway hit in 2007, starring Vanessa Redgrave. Now, Kathleen Chalfant tackles this haunting evocation of grief in a fund-raiser for the Keen Company. March 13-17; keencompany.orgFrom left, Saffron Coomber, Clare Perkins and Adelle Leonce in “Emilia.”Credit…Helen Murray‘Emilia’A recording of Morgan Lloyd Malcolm’s “chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio-play,” as The New York Times put it last year, is available again. The Olivier Award-winning comedy is set in the Elizabethan theater scene, where men played women — except here women play the men playing the women, opening up a whole bunch of new opportunities. Through March 31; emilialive.comMax Chernin, center, in “Passing Through.”Credit…Diane Sobolewski‘Passing Through’Goodspeed, a company in Connecticut, is among the greatest champions of American musicals old and new, and it has finally set up an on-demand arm to offer archival recordings of its past productions. The first is this capture of the 2019 developmental production of Brett Ryback and Eric Ulloa’s show about a young man (Max Chernin) who walks from Pennsylvania to California. March 15 through April 4; goodspeed.orgTwo Playwrights Go CampingFood for Thought Productions continues its run at Theater 80 St. Marks with a double bill that should be catnip to connoisseurs of theatrical camp. The program includes the Tennessee Williams one-act comedy “Lifeboat Drill,” set on the Queen Elizabeth II, and Christopher Durang’s “For Whom the Southern Belle Tolls,” a wicked parody of “The Glass Menagerie” in which Laura becomes Lawrence, who collects glass swizzle sticks. Durang and the actress Carroll Baker are expected to turn up for a post-show Q. and A. March 8 and 13-14; foodforthoughtproductions.comPhoebe Hyder in “Dream.”Credit…Stuart Martin, via RSCInteractive ExperiencesAfter its concert of the 1930s Broadway flop “Swingin’ the Dream,” the Royal Shakespeare Company is involved in another experiment inspired by “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” A multimedia, choose-your-own-narrative, high-concept show — in other words, it’s unclear how this will look — “Dream” is led by Puck and the Sprites and involves motion-capture technology, as well as a score including the Gestrument, an app that allows for composition through movement. March 12-20; dream.onlineThe New York-based playwright Aya Ogawa’s 2015 play “Ludic Proxy” dealt with virtual reality and incorporated polling. And now Ogawa has adapted part of it for the new “Ludic Proxy: Fukushima,” presented by the Japan Society and PlayCo, with the audience polling conducted online. Live on March 6, 7 and 11, then on-demand March 12-26; japansociety.orgBathsheba Piepe in “Plymouth Point.”Credit…Matt HassThe London Stone TrilogySwamp Motel’s Clem Garritty and Ollie Jones (of Punchdrunk, the immersive-theater company behind “Sleep No More”) have created a tripartite project that is not so much theater as theatrical experience — think virtual escape room, but with actor Dominic Monaghan. In “Plymouth Point,” you and your friends must unravel a sprawling, maleficent conspiracy by summoning all your combined wits and the internet’s resources to crack passwords, solve riddles and search social media. (Full disclosure: My bumbling team put on a display of pitiful detective skills. Who would have thought watching hundreds of hours of cop shows could be so useless?) The next installments, “The Mermaid’s Tongue” and “The Kindling Hour,” will be available in the United States soon. You can already do the British versions; but they are live, so just keep the time difference in mind. plymouthpoint.co.ukAdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      Shakespeare, Swing and Louis Armstrong. So What Went Wrong?

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best ComedyBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest MoviesBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyShakespeare, Swing and Louis Armstrong. So What Went Wrong?Three theaters are exploring “Swingin’ the Dream,” which tanked on Broadway in 1939, but opens a window on the racial and artistic dynamics of its time. More