Bringing Theatre to the Virtual Town Square

Tjaša Ferme: Hey, theatre, science, and innovation fans. This is Tjaša Ferme, your podcast host for Theatre Tech Talks: AI, Science, and Biomedia in Theatre, a podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. Tune in.

Brandon Powers is a creative director plus choreographer who creates experiences across physical and virtual space. His work focuses on capturing liveness in the digital, building interdisciplinary communities, and shifting culture towards a more embodied future. Brandon, let's just jump in. You are telling me that you're a part of a program at Lincoln Center. Do tell more.

Brandon Powers: Absolutely. Yes, I am a part of the Lincoln Center Collider Fellowship this year, which is a new program that they've started at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Really focused on this intersection of performance and technology, which is really at the root of everything I'm really focused on as well, and it's been an incredible opportunity.

There's about six of us in residence from October of 2024 to May of 2025, and we have access to lots of different space on campus and resources, opportunities to collaborate with their teams. They really just want for us to be here and have the opportunity to create new work and excite the institution and other audiences about what we could do with performance and tech.

Tjaša: Amazing. I love it. We worked on a project, I don't know, seven years ago, eight years ago, some years ago, and it was an amazing piece. It was New York Times Critics' Pick, but it was like a regular piece of theatre, right? It didn't have all these…

Brandon: Yes, exactly.

Tjaša: ...influences of crazy tech, which is what we're both doing now. So, I would love to hear your trajectory. How the hell did you get here? What happened?

Brandon: I know. Absolutely right. It's funny when I am trying to describe work to people, and I have to say “traditional theatre” in quotes, but I'm like, "Well, the work I was doing before wasn't actually traditional, but I guess compared to what I'm doing now, I guess in some ways it is." But it's been a circuitous, winding journey, a little bit of a slippery slope, I like to describe it as.

I have always been really fascinated with technology at large and how it's influencing our culture, and I was making a lot of work about that and about this influence of technology. Slowly, the way that the tech was part of the form itself began to unfurl over several years.

I, even ten years ago, worked on a project with Google Glass, and we were creating opportunities for improv performance where the actors were reading AI generated scripts in the lenses as the show script. I was working with an engineer on how to create the structures of the play. I was essentially acting as this director or dramaturg to say, "Okay. If we're telling the story of Romeo and Juliet, but we're pulling all of the text from Reddit and Yahoo answers." It was ten years ago. "How do we still tell the story of Romeo and Juliet? What are the main beats per scene?"

That experience really helped me first understand that my brain works in this systems thinking sort of way, which tailors itself really nicely to working with technology, which is a little bit different from some artists who are a little bit more expressive and cloudy in their high-in-the-sky visions of things. I'm like, "Oh, I don't have that superpower. Instead, I have this very structural superpower and I like rules." That was really the first thing that taught me what's possible.

And then, I was making a lot of immersive theatre at first around the time when we were working together and worked with the company, Woodshed Collective, based here in New York. And then, that found its way into work with more AI through the Columbia University Digital Storytelling Lab. And there's an amazing mentor of mine who works there, Lance Weiler, who is a fantastic leader in this intersectional space.

We were working on a number of really exciting projects with AI, and one of them went to Sundance in 2018, and I was thrown in the deep end of working with that sort of technology. And then while I was there, experiencing a lot more virtual reality because this is the time when that was really booming in an industry, and it just kept rolling.

And then, I worked on another larger VR project, which got another project, and I just found myself in this moment in the trajectory of immersive tech where everyone was beginning to have these conversations about how we can actually solve a lot of the issues that we kept seeing over and over again.

A lot of people were having this discussion that theatremakers and dance makers actually have all the answers or have a large number of the answers more so than filmmakers. And I was in the right place at the right time and sharing a lot of perspectives from that experience. So people were like, "Whoa, yeah, we buy this stuff." And it was really taken in and it just kept on growing and growing from there.

Tjaša: I will say, this is so funny, because I literally hear Lance's name in every other conversation I have.

Brandon: Of course.

Tjaša: I feel like he's such a jumping point or maybe a little incubator for minds that are at this intersection of art and digital forms. This is great and this is beautiful, and I hope to meet him one day. It's so funny. Everybody says you should really talk to him.

Brandon: Absolutely.

Tjaša: I am really curious to say that it's been a slippery slope, and I think that, I really believe in that, we learn the most when we fall. I'm curious actually about some of the slips, because I'm sure that they were the most transformational for you.

Brandon: Absolutely, yeah. This has been an upward climb and downward slip for sure over these years. I think a large challenge that I've faced is figuring out where I fit in and where this work fits in the arts ecosystem in the US. We have seen a lot of shifts over the last ten years in art support at large, but even more specifically in these conversations about technology and who wants to produce this work, who wants to fund this work, and then also where can it actually be seen.

I found myself in jumping back and forth a lot, and moving between trying to pitch this work to theatre and dance institutions in 2015, and them going, "Are you... What? We don't do that." And I'm like, "Trust me. All you need to do is give me the rehearsal space. I'll figure out all the tech stuff. I don't need you for that. I'll do it," and I'm not really understanding how to do it. And then, being really embraced actually by the tech industry and those folks in a way that I think was surprising to a lot of arts friends of mine.

But then, that side started to dry up over the last several years, and now we're seeing this great boom in arts institutions that are really bringing this work into their seasons and programming, which is really exciting. So, I think a big part of the slip was definitely feeling like you go forward in this direction and you got to swing back to this side as you're constantly trying to advocate for yourself and advocate for other artists in this work. It's not just a, "Oh, this is the path that it is to be a young director in New York City," which is what I really thought I was doing ten years ago.

Ultimately, that's really exciting and why we love this work, because we're all inventing something new together, which I love. So, that was definitely a big slip along with a lot of challenges around really where the work ends up. And COVID, I think, created a lot of challenges, obviously for everyone. But just when a lot of this sort of work was booming, it really took the sails out of some processes, especially some very specific ones that were supposed to happen and then all never really recovered.

So, that's challenging, so we just always have to constantly adapt to what the taste of the moment is and what people want to experience. It's definitely affected now the type of work I'm trying to make currently because of those challenges.

Tjaša: Yeah. I relate to so much of what you're saying, this constant juggling and who am I speaking to and why am I speaking to them. Feels like running not only one huge, endless mountain, but it feels like I'm running up several different mountains at once. I almost feel like I have these split personalities or split parts of myself, and all of them are trying to scramble up a different mountain.

Because the question is, okay, maybe I'm going to produce the work by myself, maybe I'm not just going to be pitching to others. And then it's like, how do I fund this work if that's the route I'm taking? And then once you've done the work, for me, I'm still enough of a theatre kid that I want to perform. Once you've done it, even twenty-one or twenty-four performances is not enough, so I'm always looking “where can I tour?" I want to tour.

And then, there's the question of money. Well, how do we sustain this in the long run? Who's really funding me to come up with this and to produce this? So it's so many questions and so many different reasons for parts of the journey, why and how and where we're going. It's really tricky, and it's so much fun to hear from other artists that are facing similar challenges.

Brandon: Absolutely. These challenges need to be solved widely for everyone. I am very passionate about trying to help solve these challenges, and I've run a number of different programs or given lots of different talks or do a lot of consulting around these specific challenges of funding and where the work can get toured, et cetera.

Specifically here in this country, because for folks that are less aware of the extended reality performance scene, that work is actually very well-supported in other parts of the world, especially in Europe and in Asia, more particularly Canada, and Germany, and France, and Taiwan, and South Korea. They're all really kicking our butt, and I want to help America not get our butt kicked in this regard.

I lead a musical theatre extended reality program at Musical Theatre Factory, which is an art service organization, and we are really proud to create this sort of program. This is super unique in this country to give artists just the chance to learn what is possible with this technology and without the stress of needing to already have all the funding and the idea perfectly set. There's this big gap I was seeing in my own production process of how do I figure out what I want to do, because it's already really expensive to even just do that.

We really fund that moment in the process. Oh, you want to make a thing with an experience and you think you want to use holograms, but you don't really know what that actually means? Come work with us. We'll teach you about the difference between motion capture and volumetric capture and help build a Pepper's Ghost set up so that you could actually create this vision that you have, and then you can go with those materials to a producer with a pitch deck and you're ready to actually get the investment.

So, I'm hoping to really help solve a lot of these challenges. We're actually hosting a large event this June, where we're not just doing a hackathon for XR musicals, but also leading a summit to try to answer some of these questions with industry leaders.

Tjaša: That's great. Yeah. I'm super curious about the VR world and theatre world coming together, colliding, borrowing from one another. What is this handshake between the VR and the physical reality? What are theatremakers wanting from VR that currently the reality is not giving them? And what are the VR folks wanting from the real world that the VR is not giving them?

Theatremakers and dance makers, we are spatial creators. We understand how to move people through space when we create experiences… Those same sorts of techniques are precisely what the VR and immersive technology world needs.

Brandon: Yeah, it's a great framing for where we are in the industry. I think that I do love to start from that point and help people understand that theatremakers and dance makers, we are spatial creators. We understand how to move people through space when we create experiences, it’s traditionally in rooms that we're asking our actors or dancers to move across stages and spaces in order to create meaning. Sometimes that's in a perceiving environment, sometimes that's in the round.

So, those same sorts of techniques are precisely what the VR and immersive technology world needs, because they are also spatial mediums. They are asking you to be guided through the experience aversively with action all around you. You're trying to find ways to move your visitor in the headset to look behind themself, right when they hear a sound, or to maybe walk across a room, or to use specific gestures.

We, as theatremakers, are experts in inciting that sort of reaction in people. We understand how, "Oh, if I move someone maybe behind you, you're going to naturally turn," or, "If we create sound in these different elements, we're going to do that." Versus traditional filmmakers where a lot of the VR world started and where a lot of the...

That's why we have all the film festivals holding space for this VR work. They're used to cuts and flat surfaces and zooming in. Actually, none of the techniques that make filmmakers special, that I don't have, apply to VR. The only same thing is that they involve screens, and that's the kind of least important part of it in my opinion. So, the experiences do feel like immersive theatre, and that's why you really see a lot of overlap between those types of creators.

One of the best seminal pieces from the last original generation of VR narratives called Wolves in the Walls, and it was made in collaboration with Third Rail, which is the well-known immersive dance company. When you've experienced that work, it doesn't have any dance in it at all, but just the fact that choreographers worked on it makes it feel so good to be in. You just are naturally moving through it because you know your body is being taken care of.

Through that experience, and then creating a lot of my own things, that's led me to create my own methodology called embodiment design, which is all about designing from the inside out, using these choreographic and theatrical techniques to better build immersive experience for VR. So, those are the sorts of things I think really do apply, and I love helping theatre folks feel empowered by the knowledge they already have and that it's really extremely valuable.

We're so used to hanging out with ourselves all the time in our insular community that we forget that we talk about things and move through the world in a very specific way. And that even the most basic rehearsal technique is groundbreaking to other fields, and that they need it. And it is and that's great. It doesn't mean they're behind. It just means like, "Oh, wow, you never knew to talk to us, and now we can talk about it together."

Tjaša: Wow. Love it. Well, you said the word isolation, and this is something that I experienced when I don a headset, but it feels like I am together in the theatre with all of you. Either I'm on stage or either I'm in the audience, and then when a moment comes to don a VR headset, I feel like I am in my head, I'm somewhere else, and the connection with everybody around me dissipates. What's the, not the antidote for this, but what is the connector? How can this work together?

Brandon: Yeah. There's this idea of collectivity in theatre and performance is definitely a main tenant of what we consider to be theatre. I think there's another tenet of it that allows a little bit of the antidote, which is this idea of liveness, which I'll get into, and VR and AR really do allow for opportunities in liveness.

But while it can be isolating, we can create experiences for one person. I'm often mostly excited about experiences for multiple participants at a time or that are inviting you to actually engage with the environment that you're in, so it doesn't feel like you're totally stuck and that we understand that you are a moving body through space, and you're not just sitting in a chair spinning, looking around.

There's certainly some work that might fit that paradigm, but I find myself working in often the spaces where we're trying to bring people through it. Or if it is a solo activity, really leaning into the fact that it is a solo activity and what is unique about the solo activity and how can we use what we know about intimacy in theatre to make that specially intimate and solo, and then decide, "Oh no, this should be collective."

We've made lots of strides in the past few years and the ability just technically to create multi-user experiences, and that has just allowed for so many more different types of stories to be told and different sorts of interactions to happen. But as I said, there's also this idea of liveness, which I think is really integral to theatre, and it's what makes it so different from so many other live forms and/or art forms. That's why that to me really allows this work, regardless of how many people you're doing it with, feel alive.

When we talk about liveness, we're saying, "Okay. Even if there isn't a live actor in this experience with you, talking to you, how can we still create this sense that this event is happening for you right now?" Maybe there is a unique event happening that you are triggering or the way you interact with the experience allows it to really feel like it is responding to you in the way that a live actor would.

I would say essentially anything I've worked on in the past while always has that element. I'm really, really jazzed about creating experiences where it's unique for every single person, because that's something that we can do in VR and AR that was very hard to do in live performance. We could maybe do that a little bit, but now because of all the data we're gathering from you putting the headset on, we can really create something that's responding directly to how you want to move through the space and how you want to interact with it.

That can change the narrative. It could change all sorts of different things. That, to me, gives it this liveness, which ultimately makes it feel theatrical in many ways.

Tjaša: Yeah, yeah. Can you maybe give an example of what a customization looks like or what a specific experience for a participant looks like?

Brandon: For sure. One project that I worked on that really exemplifies this is called Queerskins: ARK, which was the second episode of a VR series created by Illya Szilak and Cyril Tsiboulski. I joined them on this second episode of this VR narrative. The heart of this episode is you exploring the diary of the main character.

In the first scene, the mother, the character discovers his diary and you watch her start to read it, and then you kind of fall into the diary, so to speak, and enter his memory. And then, it goes from a memory scene into a dance duet between him and his boyfriend. Those dances represent different journal entries.

So, what we did to represent this and give this idea of liveness and interaction is I choreographed a dance experience here where depending on how you moved through the space, the dance was responding and changing in real time, so it was completely unique for every single person that would go through the experience. I like to say that you were co-choreographing with me across time and space.

So that we had to build, again, going back to the systems idea, this system that allowed us to do that essentially where I built a structure that said, "Okay. Here's the beginning, middle, and end." That will be in a certain location, or we'll always see these dance segments.

We recorded this whole dance in small minute-long segments. And we said, "Okay. Maybe you're going to go segment one and then you have A or B, and then you're going to do segment two, and then you're going to get C or D, and then you're going to have the conclusion." We could change not just what choreography you witness, but also the location of the choreography and how it makes you move in the environment, because it was created for a thirty-foot diameter space, so really large space to move around in for VR.

So, you found yourself creating this very specific memory, within his memory, with dance. That's one example of how you can create these really special moments and then allows people to come out of headset and say, "Oh, did you see this moment?" And someone might say, "Yes, I did." And someone might say, "Oh, whoa, I didn't see that."

That allows you to think about, "Oh, that was really special just for me." Or how did my version of reality and my version of this memory feel different from their version of the memory, which is kind of how memory works.

Tjaša: Were headsets that you were using in this particular project, were they immersive or were they not immersive?

Brandon: Immersive meaning mixed reality headsets?

Tjaša: I guess so, that, yeah, you can walk and be in the space and at the same time you're wearing a headset.

Brandon: And see, have passthrough?

Tjaša: Yeah.

Brandon: No, this is a project from 2020, so that was really before the passthrough craze took off. It was intentionally for a fully virtual environment, but wireless so you could move through this space. And a huge part of my work as well was making sure we took care of you and you didn't bump into anything and thinking about where you are in the room at any given time, and then how we should respond by putting the dance across the room to maybe make you walk in that direction, et cetera.

Tjaša: What was maybe the data or the input from the viewer that influenced that C or D option or the customization aspect again?

Brandon: The customizations were mainly based off of the point in space you were in the giant circle of the play environment. So if you were in the northwest corner, we could tell the system, "Okay. We really like segment C if you're up there," or "We really want you to walk across the space because you're up in the northwest, so we're going to spawn segment C in the southeast to get you to move across the space."

And then depending on how close you got to the dancers, we were able to track that and then deliver two different versions of the middle choreography. There was a version that it was a really intimate section of the duet, and we either had both dancers together or just one of them performing it with no one filling in the negative space. And depending on how close you would be to the dances to that point, we chose one or the other because we were trying to...

Actually, a big thing from the director is, "Oh, we're trying to make people feel queer in their own skin." There's something different about the way they're viewing the world, so we wanted to place them in a situation they might not have wanted to be in initially, like what is it like to put something really close to people who have been standing really far away? Yeah, that's a little bit of some of the data that headset was using.

We played with the controllers also a little bit to allow you to fly through the space, so there was lots of different angles we took. Now, there's opportunity to play with eye tracking and all sorts of other-

Tjaša: Brain waves.

Brandon: Brain waves, exactly, that really allow it to feel effortless to integrate.

Tjaša: Yeah, I'd be super interested in trying Galatea to see all the perks of the heavy tech all in my head, through me. Yeah, so much fun. I saw this documentary about the musical that you're working on, Come See Your Future, which is a VR musical. Can you explain maybe on this example how you're working and how the two mediums blend?

Brandon: For sure. That piece Come See Your Future which is by Emma Lee Kidwell and Maria Andreoli is one of the projects that we're supporting through Musical Theatre Factory's XR program. That offers a very different proposal for how we can blend theatre and VR. The proposal there is that this is a hybrid theatrical and VR experience, so you would be in a theatre of some kind, and every audience member in the theatre would have a headset at their seat.

So, the experience goes back and forth between live action and VR. It's not meant to be just certain moments that are gimmicky, but rather we need to go into VR because it's dramaturgically necessary and really wants to create an opportunity to see new perspectives and to see added interaction. So in this piece, which has...

I like to describe it a little bit of WALL-E meets Rent in terms of its vibe. It's like sci-fi, but about young people in space, like in climate disaster. So, there's this drug that they take on the spaceship called Destiny, which allows them to see the future. We were playing with this idea that every time the character takes the drug, we go on a trip and the trip's in VR. So when they see the future, they can actually experience things in a new way, and we even actually jump into different first-person perspectives of each of the main characters throughout the show.

We're traditionally only able to see it from the outside looking in. Omniscient narrator is the style of musical theatre, but now we can go from that lens to I'm inside Gwen's head, I'm inside Anna's head, et cetera, which is completely revolutionary and new for the form. So, a huge part of the workshop that we did last year was testing out what it feels like to go between live action and VR, because this is a completely new language and style that needs to be invented.

What is it like to take your headset off and still be in a room full of people in the way you were talking about before, or to suddenly be isolated? Does that suck? We think this is a good idea in theory, but maybe this is a miserable experience and we shouldn't make things like this. We were really happily surprised that it worked really well, as we found some really exciting theatrical techniques with actually some eyes towards these mixed reality headsets and using the passthrough cameras to essentially have people put the headset on, and then the view fades from what they're seeing on stage in headset into the virtual space.

So, we're actually able to transition you into it. You take on the character's control, you help them find this special engine object and you grab it in your seat, and then when the thing fades up, the character's on stage holding that prop. So, there's this perfect flow from—they're going in, you become them, you come out, and you've just done what they need to move the story forward and—

Tjaša: That's awesome.

Brandon: It's fun.

Tjaša: So, they never take off the headset then? They always have it on if it's a passthrough.

Brandon: They do. We think they do take it off because it would be a long time to keep it on continuously. But what the passthrough allows for is for that transition to not take five minutes and be really clunky. We devised these transitional minutes where it's like, okay, there's a movement sequence happens, which cues everyone, "Oh, it's headset time." As I'm doing this, something's happening on stage but I'm not missing it. I don't feel like I'm missing anything because I can still see it.

We now know everyone's wearing their headset because we have the ability to know, and then everyone's in, hit go, boom, and we come out. That moment of transition is arguably the largest pain point, besides budget, for this work that I think producers are scared of, because they're like, "Who wants to do that?" But actually if you make it seamless and really sexy to do, it worked pretty well.

Tjaša: I know. You said the magic word transitions in making theatre that uses high tech, any kind of high tech, the transitions are really the tricky point and where you need to spend a lot of time to figure out how to make it, maybe not painless, but effortless and still fun.

Brandon: Yes. That ultimately is, to your question earlier about what is the antidote or what allows these forms to work so well together, it's because theatremakers are so good at transitions. All of your favorite directors are your favorite directors because they're awesome at transitions. At least that's me. That's why I'm obsessed with David Cromer, and Andy Blankenbuehler, and people that you're just like, "Whoa. What just happened?" That is one of the most important skills in VR directing, so it just lends itself really well.

One of the reasons why I love the XR community is that everyone in it is an orphan. Everyone's come from somewhere else.

Tjaša: Beautiful.

Brandon: One of the reasons why I love the XR community is that everyone in it is an orphan. Everyone's come from somewhere else. Everyone has a background in something else because until really now, there was no one really studying this in college that deeply. Some people were, but not to the degree that we do now. So everyone who says, "Oh, I'm in VR now," maybe was an architect or was in theatre or was a visual artist or was a developer and is learning more about the artistic skills.

So, all these different experiences allow us to create something new and unique. That's definitely a challenge because we all speak very different languages, and that's a huge part of the work I do is this idea of translation, but it's also great to be surrounded by people with different perspectives.

Tjaša: Yeah. What do you suggest for people who are interested in dabbling in VR? Where should they start? What, I don't know, programs are we looking into learning? What softwares to use? What's your suggestion?

Brandon: I think the best way to investigate this space is to just try as many different experiences as possible in headset. Similar to theatremaking and going to see a ton of theatre and that helping understand your taste, it's the same here. You're going to see, “oh, this work is from this theatre and this is what they decided to do, and these are the technologies they use. Why did they do that? This is what we can do now.”

I think you'll have lots of ideas around what should be happening or shouldn't be happening in the experience, and you'll say, "Oh, this feels really good to do. This feels really bad. Why does it feel bad? I want to figure that out. What do they do in this experience that is not so great, and while this one was great?" That's I think a really great first step because it is such an embodied spatial medium. You will literally feel it if it feels good or bad for some reason, and it will inspire you to want to make something different.

I do these XR dates, I like to call them colloquially, with Musical Theatre Factory, where we invite people to the studio who are curious and we just say, "Hey, come in. I'm going to put the headset on your face. We're going to talk about it. I'm going to self-guide you through this whole journey. We're going to try AR experiences. I'm going to break down the different vocabulary for you."

We find that people, one, really do need that level of high touch to feel safe, and B, all have very different outcomes in terms of what they find interesting because they're instantly, some people are like, "Whoa, I really liked how I could use an iPad that was so simple." And then some other people are like, "Whatever. I'm using an iPad to look at this table. I don't care about that." And I'm like, "Cool. That's interesting. You want to do something else? Great."

Yeah. One, they can definitely reach out if they want a date, but also try things out. Some great resources include No Proscenium. They're an amazing podcast and blog, Discord community. That was really integral to my beginnings of these steps. Consider joining some sort of hackathon. That's also where I really got my start. I just threw myself in and I said, "I think I have something to offer to this community, even if it's not hard coding," because I'm not a coder whatsoever.

You'd be surprised, I think, if you're not inside this world, that it is extremely welcoming actually. People are like, "Whoa, yeah, you have this vision? Cool. Let's figure it out." Kind of almost more so than the arts world is to be honest. So, feel free to throw your hat into the ring.

Just do a lot of reading. There's lots of resources out there to just read about what new technology is coming out, what these tools are that will get you to go, "Oh, they just made a thing that allows you to talk to AI and with augmented reality, and then you could talk to your friends at the same time. Oh, that makes me think about X piece and what that wants to be." And then, it's just a matter of finding the right collaborators and everything like that, but that feels like very much step two and three.

Tjaša: Beautiful. Beautiful. Okay. We're all going to sign up for a date, a VR date, XR date with you in Musical Theatre Factory. That's how we kind of reconnected anyway, so I'm in. Do tell us about TheatreRoyale, which is a new project that you're working on.

Brandon: Sure. In some ways, very different, but also very much still in the spirit and heart of trying to connect more communities together. I am just launching now this new project called TheatreRoyale, which is a blend of interactive theatre, video game, live streams, and Fortnite.

Essentially, the idea is that two actors, who we call our players, are playing Fortnite while performing a classic play simultaneously. They have to continue to do this task. And then, there are two members of the online audience, who we call our guardians, who have to protect them while they perform the play inside a live game of Fortnite, live public game. If they die, they have to start the play over again. That’s the essential conceit and loop.

It really emerged from two things. One, me being really fascinated with internet cultures, being really fascinated by the role-playing communities that are really popular on Twitch, specifically like Grand Theft Auto. Also fascinated with Fortnite as a place. I’m thinking of Fortnite, in my mind, is the modern day agora of Ancient Greece, and that it’s the place where we can actually all gather. It’s extremely accessible. It is where young people like to just hang out with each other, and saying, “Okay. If that’s where this new town square is, that’s where theatre should be,” because where the original Dionysian festivals and theatre emerged from thousands of years ago.

That really resonated with me. While we’re seeing all these articles about the death of the American theatre and all these audiences aren’t coming back, what are they going to do, et cetera, et cetera. And one, I felt like these audiences exist. They’re actually just playing Fortnite and watching streams and they’re there. But also physicalizing this metaphor of the audience quite literally needing to keep the theatre alive felt really enticing to me, because I really like to make work where the audience is enacting the metaphor of the work and it's more of a metatheatrical point than it is about the narrative of the piece.

It's like, "Oh, I'm asking you to do a task. You now just kept an actor alive literally. Thank you for your service.” That’s all I care about. I don’t care if you actually care about the play. You might not even realize that you’re doing that, and that’s fine too. It wants to very much be a Twitch stream. It wants to feel like a Twitch stream. It doesn’t want to feel like a Zoom play.

So, that’s what we’re doing, and we just launched it. Check us out on TheatreRoyale on Twitch, and by the time this gets posted, we’ll probably have our TikTok and YouTube up and running too, so we’re excited to just hit the ground running with that one.

Tjaša: I love it. I love it. First of all, which classical text are they doing? It's not a super relevant question, but I have to go there and I love to feel about the agora, and so that's when theatre needs to happen, and that's where we go. Then in the realm of that, it also feels like, would it be a sacrilege to then do it in person and not via a live stream because it would be taking the Twitchers away from Twitch?

Brandon: Yeah, no, you're right on target. Firstly, the plays we have been experimenting with are Waiting for Godot, which works really in a fun way in Fortnite, in that kind of existential waiting while you're being attacked and can't defend yourself, it feels quite right. And then, we also have played with Antigone, which feels really great inside the game as well, and we kind of stage it by the gates and then by the big temples in the game and things like that. This idea of like, oh, bury my brother, this big epic moment needs to happen while people are dying around you.

And then, we also experimented with Love Letters by A. R. Gurney, and we had two different actors come from across the map to meet each other in the middle. It was like this epic journey of love to reconcile together. So, that's kind of where we're starting, and then we'll continue to build out from there. There's tons of different rules and interactive ways people play with the stream, one of which is a poll that decides what play we're doing, so the actors don't even know what play they're doing each night, by the audience. And then where they're dropping and the game also, a wheel gets spun, their emotions and acting gets manipulated by emojis in the chat. It's a wild and fun time.

Tjaša: These actors actually know the text for different plays? They each know a few roles?

Brandon: Actually, part of the magic that we've had to devise for this is we've built a custom teleprompter tool. The script overlays right over the game, so they don't need to know it. And because the idea actually is, yes, we're developing kind of a company of actors who are learning this technique, if you will, almost like in a neo futurist-esque way. But we also have a desire to say, "Hey, ex-actor, just sit in this chair and read this text, and a bunch of teenagers are going to defend you, and it's going to be awesome." We want it to feel like it can just happen.

Tjaša: Trust us.

Brandon: Yes, trust us.

Tjaša: Give yourself to us.

Brandon: And make it really easy to do so they don't have to memorize all these different things. To the point about the in-person live experience, that's a part of our research and pipeline. We are interested in eventually doing a live theatrical extension of the project, and we're still figuring out exactly what that means, but it would be a combination of digital and physical.

You can imagine an experience where these players are up on this pedestal doing the play, and there's these giant screens behind them projecting the stream. It's maybe in a big public square, and people can just come up and play as the guardians in person or online. So, anyone walking by can step up and help create the theatre, or maybe there's microphones and people are able to take on some of the roles in the room.

It actually deeper drives this idea of community theatremaking, which also really feels hot to me, because then, it's like we're literally doing the agora. We're literally doing theatre together in this new environment. We just happen to be using a video game that's really popular to be our medium as opposed to stage play.

Tjaša: It's basically like watching a game from your favorite team, and you actually have a chance of aiding in the game somehow and expressing your feelings…

Brandon: Absolutely.

Tjaša: ...being there, being involved. Your work is so exciting. Thanks for taking the time. This was wonderful.

Brandon: Thanks. Thanks so much for having me.

Tjaša: This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of the show and other HowlRound shows wherever you find podcasts. If you love this podcast, I sure hope you did, post a rating and write a review on those platforms. This helps other people find us. If you're looking for more progressive and disruptive content, visit howlround.com. Thanks for listening and have an amazing day.