VR sets, avatar protagonists and 3D puppetry are bringing London’s theatres to life, says
Technology Rosamund Urwin
ACERULEAN sprite floats down and hovers above the stage. “I come to answer thy best pleasure; be it to fly, to swim, to dive into the fire, to ride on the curled clouds,” he proclaims, his body rotating as he acts out the words. Then the ethereal figure ignites — “sometimes I divide and burn” — before rising again from the ashes.
Shakespeare buffs will recognise the words from the first scene between Prospero and Ariel in The Tempest. But this version by the Royal Shakespeare Company — at the Barbican until August 18 and starring Simon Russell Beale as Prospero — is a novel take on the bard’s (arguably) last play. It uses live-action performance capture technology, which Ariel, whose name suggests a messenger between earth and the spirit world, rendered as an avatar on the stage.
“This is 21st-century puppetry, allowing us to play on stage,” says Sarah Ellis, director of digital development at the RSC. “The avatar appears when Ariel is showing off, and where the text allows us to do it.”
Mark Quartley, who plays Ariel, is zipped up in a Spider-Man-style suit, appearing both in the flesh and as a digital character that morphs into different forms — he grows bat wings and metamorphosises into a harpy and is imprisoned within a pine tree. The Tempest is a play full of magic, and the hope is the technology puts audiences into a thaumaturgic trance.
Theatre has a long history of dipping into magician’s trick boxes, from the pepper’s ghost illusion to the guillotine trick employed with such aplomb by the National in 2010’s Danton’s Death. Mixed reality is starting to be embraced by visual artists — the VR Society, a nonprofit created by Hollywood studios and tech firms last month presented The Art of AR at Sotheby’s New York, and in Josue Abraham’s recent show at Galeria Merida in Mexico, the sculptures burst into life once viewed through a smartphone — but it is only creeping into theatre now. Earlier this year, HOME in