[Suzy: This would be so cool in a dance number...except if you were expecting someone to catch you...]

Virtual and Live Actors Join on Stage
By Jennifer Viegas, The Discovery Channel
March 14, 2007

In a theatrical first, actors working in real time from remote locations recently were beamed onto a stage where they performed with live, in the flesh actors for an audience that experienced one seamless, three-dimensional show, according to the University of Central Florida.

The technology could mean future theatergoers might attend plays where one or more actors are working outside the venue, even in a different country or from their own homes.

"We are not talking about holograms yet or the kind of imagery that requires funky glasses," UCF professor John Shafer, a member of the cast, told Discovery News. "(But) what we have done for this production has indeed pushed the envelope significantly. The production is a small historical step forward on several levels."

This past weekend, Shafer was hooked to a receiving and transmitting broadband-connected computer that can pull as much as 130 megabytes of data in an instant. Although he performed in Florida, his body was "beamed" onto a stage at Bradley University in Illinois, where he performed "with" live actors there, as well as with actors beamed in from the University of Waterloo in Canada.

Both 3-D and 2-D sets consisting of multiple screens and special effects lighting helped to give the impression that all of the actors, remote or not, existed in a single space. To further link the performances, the actual live actors were also sometimes featured on screens. At one point, a virtual actor even appeared to hand a live actor a cigarette.

Shafer said, "People have been incorporated into the digital world before. ‘Lord of the Rings’ used a live time actor digitization on the set...Ours, however, does it with real time, live actors at a distance, right where you can come and see it. You get the human contact that film and computers alone cannot provide."

This first use of the technology was for the play "The Adding Machine," written in 1923 by Elmer Rice. Appropriately, it explores the connection between humans and technology.

Shafer appeared either in full or as a "Wizard of Oz," God-like speaking head during the performance.

Five-time Emmy Award winning composer and producer James Oliverio of the University of Florida College of Fine Arts flew to Illinois over the weekend to view the play. Just a few weeks ago, Oliverio achieved a similar technical feat by uniting performances by ethnic and indigenous peoples from throughout North, Central and South America over a high-speed network.

"Such virtual reality technology gives directors an enhanced palette of possibilities," Oliverio told Discovery News. "‘The Adding Machine’ represents the first successful adaptation of an emerging art form and culture of multimedia that enables seamless presentations. We are just now starting to see the capabilities and where it might lead us in future."

He added, "We are now dealing with a four-dimensional experience, where time is the fourth dimension. The innovation is that the virtual world is woven so tightly into the live, onstage physical performance that it forms a holistic whole for the audience."

Oliverio thinks the technology can "breathe new life" into modernistic 20th century plays like "The Adding Machine," which may have been ahead of their time.

Shafer and his team next plan to present "Alice Experiments in Wonderland," a play that will beam actors simultaneously onto three live stages in different locations.

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