 Welcome to Experiments in Digital Storytelling, presented to you by Culture Hub and LaMama. This is a new program that we've developed to test emerging technologies to see how we can create meaningful stories, meaningful experiences, and really reach each other through these new sources and platforms. Today, we have an open rehearsal with the whole team from Double Eye Studios. We feel like opening up the process to the audience is really important at this point, because there are so many minds working in so many different directions to figure out just how to do this thing, which they're trying to do, which is VR theater. Today, you're going to see from actors, from directors, from writers, producers, from technologists. We're going to get to hear from all of those perspectives about what this collaboration is like and how we're doing it. This is also leading up to a long opportunity that they're going to do in May. That's called Pandora X, which the director, Kira Benzing, will tell you a lot about. Tonight, we are using Live Lab, which is how we're connecting to everybody in all the different locations, because obviously we're all distributed across many different locations. Live Lab is an experimental software that Coulter Hub is developing to create a place where artists, audiences, technologists can come together and collaborate and perform. We're also bringing VR chat, which is the venue that Double Eye is using. We have a lot going on. We might have some technical difficulties at some certain moments. We did this afternoon, which is par for the course. That's a good thing if we're breaking things because then we'll figure out how to fix them and push them harder next time. Glad you're here. I'm Maddie with Coulter Hub and I'm now handing it over to Kira Benzing with Double Eye Studios. Thanks Maddie. Hi, live audience. Thank you for being here with us tonight. As we test the second round of this online experiment, it's really our experiments in digital storytelling, and storytelling, and virtual storytelling, and all of these formats that we're layering, and collaging, and mashing together to see what we can do. Yes, we expect things to break and if they do, we're going to look at that as an opportunity because it means we're learning something from what we're doing. So if we disappear, if our audio stops, stick with us, hang in there, we'll be back, because we're New Yorkers and we want to stop. And so we're really going to show you this open rehearsal. We're going to open the doors to our process. We're in a very learning kind of place. We are in a really experimental new place where we are just trying things. We are going to run some scenes from a production that we did at the Venice International Film Festival, this production called Love Seat. We're going to bring in our actors from across the country for that. And that will be partially in VR and it will also be live here. So it's all intended to be done at the downstairs theater space with La Mama and Culture Hub. And that was supposed to be for a live audience, as well as very virtual world and VR audience. But everything has changed, the speed of the world has changed and now we're changing our format to reach you digitally. So you are our new live audience and we are just so excited for you to be here and for us to define what it means to have seats anymore, to gather, to be a community, to experience and watch together. In the middle of the night, we are going to run an experiment with you. And so for those of you watching on Thinkbook, we need you to add your comments. We're going to be asking questions and we're going to take those comments and we're going to turn them into the beautiful word collage, this word cloud collectively together as an audience. And then we're going to go and show you a kind of flash forward of where we're going with this scene from Pandora X, which is totally new. We 3D modeled a new environment. Our actor just got the text a few days ago. So we're in a really new space together and we're going to learn together. And in order to get started, we want to show you the trailer from Love Seat. So you can get an idea of what we performed at the Venice Film Festival in this beautiful medieval building that actually housed a hospital to treat lepers and victims from the plague. So you will actually see this incredible quarantine space that was converted into a space for art for turning something that had a group of people that cared about other people, coming together to care for the sick in these times. So take a look at this trailer with us and see into the space where we came up with some new methods in storytelling. That's amazing. Is that anyone like you, perfect partner? You're like an electric blanket plugged into the sun. We'll transform into a colossus of organization to protect you, my field of preparedness. Don't fly the perfect partner of a portal to another dimension. Are you nuts? No bee ever has. The fresh chance to pair an ordinary someone with the perfect partner. I see a face that's still ready to just jump into the unknown and witness natures like chaotic wonders with exhilaration instead of fear. Giving a thing in maintenance, that is a daily, hourly battle against every force that exists. Your perfect partner sitting in that chair. What would you say? That is a look back at where we have been and what we performed at the Venice International Film Festival. And we really did that production in record time. We assembled all of that in about six weeks of time from the writing of the show with writer Mac Rogers, playwright Mac Rogers, the casting of the production to the two actors you see above me on the screen. Jen Harris who joins us from New York City who originated the role of Abby in Love Seat and Jonathan David Martin who joins us from across the country in Los Angeles who originated the role of Bruce. And we did everything from writing this production to casting it to remodeling, designing our set, two of everything. You can think about this production had a real world version of everything and a virtual world version of everything, a live physical set and a virtual set, live physical blocking and virtual blocking where Jen would even fly through the air 30 feet above the virtual stage. And so we're gonna take you into the middle of this show where we have this scene about the two characters are competing for the love of this perfect partner which happens to be represented by an empty chair. And in this production, there are these strong undercurrents of these themes about emptiness and loneliness and connection which we just felt was completely apropos for the time that we are in right now. So Jen and Jonathan, we're gonna start with this scene and we'll just run it a little differently than we did in Venice. Jen, you'll run to camera to the audience and I know that you were working with the audience live actually getting pretty close to them and working across the stage. And Jonathan, you were in VR convincing the VR audience about why you should be in love of the perfect partner. So I'm gonna give you guys a cue from the host line and we'll just jump right in. And so the host is telling them, okay, Bruce, you're gonna go for the virtual audience. Abby, you've been assigned to the live audience and he says, let the interviews begin. Look, everyone is when I chose these older lovers. I've dated a lot of mediocre people in my life. Weak people, unimaginative people or the total opposite of controlling people who wanted my life to match theirs. I kept on believing like kept on doing like that until I made a momentous decision for myself. I'm leaving the game forever. I'd rather be lonely than disappointed and I've kept that decision for years. For me to go back on that now, it would have to be someone amazing. Well, the perfect partner, who's that amazing? And you better believe I'm gonna let Bruce go into my way. I'm not here to make fun of me and there's nothing I'm only here to win this game. Okay, of course it would be Abby who'll be trying to ruin things for me. It's been that way that she moved in here for two years ago. I was trying to act like I'm the one with the problem. Oh, don't you like bees, Bruce? Don't you like honey? Well, you know what? Actually, I don't. It's thick, it's sticky and it gets into every nook and cranny. Now, every time I try to establish some exquisite order in this building, she comes along and pours that stuff all over it. But I never thought she would try to drip her beeswax over my one chance of happiness. And hey, not just mine, I mean the perfect partner's too because I know they would be happier with me. I'm not here to make friends and she is not the only one with a sting in her tail. Nice guys, it's really fun. And I know that you're both performing in such different ways right now through this new medium. Jen, I wanna say maybe you wanna, you know, start a little bit further back or even standing. I don't know if you wanna try that and just kind of use your space. You know, when we did this in Venice, you had the opportunity to kind of walk across the stage. So just feel free, whatever that means to you to kind of use your space more. Cool, yeah, I can still see you, that's great. Okay. And Johnson, I think the same thing, but virtually use your space more, you know, because we don't have Abby's avatar in there, like feel free to use the whole stage, feel free to jump into the audience if you want, surprise an audience member and try to convince them. Okay guys, I'm gonna give you a cue whenever you're ready. And so the course basically says let the interviews begin. Look, there's no reason that I still do over lovers. I've dated a lot of new people in my life. Weak people, unimaginative people, I like to tell them I'm the controlling people who want in my life to match theirs. I kept on believing and I kept on doing the right thing. So I made a momentous decision for myself. I'm leaving the game forever. I'd rather be lonely than disappointed. I mean, we need to go back on that now. I mean, you would have to be someone amazing. We're a perfect partner, isn't that amazing? You better believe I'm not gonna let Bruce do it in my way. I'm not here to make friends and there's nothing I won't do to win this game. Of course, it would be Abby who's trying to ruin this for me. I mean, it has been that way since the moment she moved in here two years ago. She's always trying to act like I'm the one with the problem. What's wrong with these Bruce? Don't you like honey? Well, you know what? No, I don't. It is sticky and it gets into every nook and cranny. And every time I've tried to establish some exquisite order in this building and she comes along and she pours that stuff all over it. You know, I never thought that she'd try to ruin my one chance of happiness. And I mean, not just mine. You know, the perfect partners too because I know that I can make them the happiest. I'm not here to make friends. And she is not the only one with us staying in her tent. That's great guys. And I can even see that our virtual camera even got up there close to when you approached that virtual audience member. So that's a nice little intimate moment there you got to have. So really fun guys. And I'm gonna jump forward in the script to scene eight which is later on in the production. It's this moment where the characters have actually gone through a lot of competing with each other. They've tried all kinds of things. Abby's transformed based on what the audience votes on. She either turns into a costal or into a marshmallow. There's one other character you turned into. Now that I'm trying to remember. Oh, a Christmas tree. It was a Christmas tree. I think marshmallow was always the audience favorite. And then Jonathan's character Bruce has transformed into ginormous heights. He's done all kinds of things to try to win the love of the perfect partner. These magical feats that of course could only happen in a virtual reality scenario. And now these characters have a more real moment where they are discovering that what they're seeing in the chair is different for each of them. The perfect partner actually appears differently to them. So I'm gonna let them take a moment here and Abby will start with you. We'll start with your character Jen. You know, I don't see a beard whenever you're ready. Well, I don't see a beard. What I see is the clean, careless face. An earnest face. Faces don't seem to believe anything. Faces that hasn't learned how to make a mirror. A face that still doesn't know what kind of adult it wants to be. And it's open to deciding that in tandem with someone else. A face that's stretched and just unknown. It looks at nature's chaotic encounters with isolation. Instead of fear, it turns every corner expecting to see something amazing instead of a fist in it to be. A face that thinks that shadows hide treasures and their flaws. A face that's breaking a promise to make yourself poor. A face that's living up on giving up for. It's weird. What is? I can see it while you say it. I mean, while you say those words, I can see it. But then it goes back to... What you see, which is what? Well, there's the beard, of course, but it's not about the beard. It's about all the beard type things that I see there. What's a beard type thing? Well, it's a thing that you can make perfect, but it'll never stay that way. Meaning that it will always need maintenance when someone that wants to do that maintenance. Because if you think about it, maintenance is the hardest thing to do on this earth. Soaring above and chanting. Wild reefs, that only takes a moment or two, but keeping those hedgerows trimmed when all they want to do is grow. I mean, that is a whole wide sport. Maintenance is a daily, probably battle against every force that exists against disrepair, dirt, grease, danger, aging, against time, keeping a thing in a state of organization and cleanliness. It is creative. It's quixotic. It's standing up in the face of decay and saying everything you tried to accomplish today, oh, I wrote it right back. You're gonna have to come back tomorrow and maintenance is the battle that you always lose, but it's a battle worth fighting and you can create so much beauty while you're fighting. And that's what I see. The chance to take the maintenance that I've mastered in the rest of my life and bring it into love. And as you're saying it, I can see it. But as soon as I stop, the beard disappears and the mind again. Thanks, guys. Thanks so much for trying that in this new format. I can see as you're both reaching through your computer screens to each other. Jen, let's just rework a little bit at the top of your part. And Jonathan, I think we'll hold in VR if you want to come out of heads that you're welcome to. Why don't you, Jen, just pretend that both the chair and Jonathan and Bruce are right through the computer camera screen. Why don't you just give it straight to the audience here? Okay, okay. Well, I don't see a beard. What I see is a clean, hairless face. An earnest face, a young face. A face that's still ready to believe anything. A face that hasn't learned the habit of smearing. A face that still, it doesn't know what kind of adult it wants to be, but is open to deciding that in tandem with someone else. A face that's ready to plunge into the unknown and look at nature's chaotic wonders with exhilaration instead of fear. A face that turns every corner expecting to see something amazing instead of a fist to see. A face that thinks that shadows hide treasures instead of claws. A face worth breaking a promise you made yourself for. A face worth giving up on giving up for. Very cool. Well, thank you guys. That was really great. Nice to try it in this new format here with our digital and virtual audience. And we're going to let Jonathan go off stage to transport from this lovesy domain into a new domain, a new stage space, this Mount Olympus, where we have Pandora X taking place. So I know he's going to be flying through a portal pretty soon. I'll try and meet him there. And Jen and I are going to try this audience test with you guys, this interactive experience. We're going to bring up a website called Slido where we are going to be playing with these questions. And so you guys are going to see them on Facebook. You guys can see these questions. I'm going to generate a question now. And this question is, describe the location of your last dream. And so for those of you on Facebook, if you can type into the comments, the location of your last dream, it can be a one word answer. It can be as detailed as you want it to be. So we're just going to drop that in and we're going to see this generate and grow together. Jen, do you have a location of your last dream? Have you been able to dream recently? Not so much recently, but I do know that my last dream, I was in a street. Was it a beautiful, was it a zombie called a zombie apocalypse street? Zombie apocalypse street is not a beautiful street. It was a very non disparate street. Maybe the rest of the team was more disparate. We'll see. That's great. We've got some, some things coming in here right now. Alyssa says a garden. Mora Donahue says a field. Oh, a bamboo grow. Oh my gosh. Beautiful. Justin says that Egypt. Oh, I like that. Getting out of New York. Egypt. Wow. That's a good dream. Beautiful. All right. I'm going to, I've seen Jonathan's getting settled over their amount of Olympus while we're running this and I'm going to move into a new question with our audience. For those of you that remember this dream, Remember what colors you saw in your last dream? I would say blue for me. I'll type it in. Great. Blue looks popular. Blue. Red, I'll say black and red. Michael says black and red. They must mean something. We're gonna have to have a dream that analysts come on and tell us what everybody means. Daria says dark red. Dark red, that's very specific. Christopher Dawson's Technicolor. Cool. Alyssa says red. Yasmeen says gray. Wow. Yasmeen had gray, a gray Egypt. You're tying those together, you can already see it. Beautiful. All right, audience. I'm gonna take us to one final question here, which is really fun for VR, which is what superpower would you like to have? And of course, we have to ask this because it's possible to do anything in VR. I'm gonna predict we're gonna get a lot of flying. You've already been able to fly quite a bit. Yeah, I'm gonna predict flying. Shape shifting, oh, that's a good one. Christopher's gonna shape shifting. That's a very cool one. Also possible in VR. Turn into a croissant. Where does that come from? From the Clara. Yasmeen says time travel. Oh, that's brilliant, that would be wonderful. That is a really good one. Alyssa says breathe under water. Laura says, Laura says invisibility. Visibility, wow. Teleportation and visibility are popular amongst our audience tonight. Again, all things that can happen in VR. So we're gonna think about exploring some of these in our show. So thank you so much, live audience, for adding these thoughts, adding these elements of your dreams and the things you want to see and play with. So we might be able to play with them in this production where you could actually do some of these things with us. Pelicanesis, like Graceland, Jennifer Tupper. Michael Woods said it would be nice to time travel back to November 7th, 2016. That's very specific. It's, well, yeah. It was a better day. It was a better day. The world is a different place, then. Yeah, I wonder what Slido would generate if you put that entire sentence in there. If you put time travel. If you just put November 7th, 2016 in the Slido, what would that generate? You shall have to see. Just a little bit. Apparently nothing. Oh, I just see a change. Well, great. Thank you all for trying this experiment with us. I really appreciate all of these responses. And Jen, thank you for being so candid as well in contributing your dream to our dream study here. And now we're going to take things over to Mount Olympus and Jonathan is embodying us character of Zeus. He's going to be wearing an avatar that is not custom for our production. It is something that we found in the many VR chat domains of avatars that you can explore and try on and transform into. And it's something that we thought we'd play with for right now, but it is not forever. So we will be making custom art for this production. And if any of you are reading modelers and character designers, give us a holler because we would love to collaborate with you. So there's Jonathan. He's waiting at the top of this temple in Mount Olympus. And this is an exploration coming from this new production that we're working on about the myth of Pandora. It's called Pandora X. I will talk to him more about that later in the Q&A. And Jonathan's just going to try this out. And he's just trying out these lines. He got this text a few days ago. Mark Sternberg built Mount Olympus for us a few days ago. So everything is really new. I'm going to be potentially on book for Jonathan if he needs a line. So Jonathan just call line and we're really going to rehearse this in front of you and see what happens. So Jonathan, whenever you're ready. Saters and nymphs of the forest and streams. Muses of Greece who give glory through song. Goddesses, gods, awake from your dreams. Come hither, come nigh and join the throng. I, the great Zeus, do so command. Mine is the power to make a man strong. I humble the proud and raise up the obscure. Whosoever shall call me wrong will suffer my vengeance, swift and sure. I, the great Zeus, do so command. Bethesda's, Bethesda's, Bethesda's. Attend to me now, Bethesda's, the sculptor. Come Aphrodite of beauty untold. Athena, ring now your wisdom and phallor and Hermes, your voice strong and bold. Are you here? Lend me your ears and eyes, my friends and allies. For the time has come to strike again, to shatter with fear the hearts of all men. Prometheus, did you think my vengeance forgotten that your misbegotten act would be lost in the mists of Mount Olympus? Do you not recall the destruction and danger? The thunder, the bolts of anger was from my hand wring down upon the heads of man. I'm playing upon you for stealing fire. I'm playing on all men who embrace their desire and by that blessed object shall know a faint most abject living in misery, bereft without a shred of hope left. Did you think I would forget my sacred vow that the passage of time would have faced it somehow? Nothing is forgotten. Wow, Jonathan, you made it. You didn't even call for a line. I surprised myself though. So Jonathan, why don't we go back to the top of the temple if you can locomote back up there and virtual cameras if you guys can reset to your starting positions. And I'm just gonna play with a very, very opening passage with you. Great. Really, you know, sadders and nymphs and why don't you just do that like those first four lines up to either great Zeus do so command and just try out a couple different avatars. Just cycle through some things. Like maybe try on a more feminine type avatar and see what happens. Try on a taller or a shorter avatar. Just cycle through one or two or three different avatars and just run those that very first passage. You don't have to come down to the dais, just stay up there and try this sort of avatar cycling from up there. Sadders and nymphs of the forest and streams, uses of grease who give glory to the song. Goddesses, gods, awake from your dreams. I come hither, come nigh, I join the throne. I the great Zeus do so command. What you see there audience is Jonathan is trying on another one, pulling another one up. Great, jump right into it. Sadders and nymphs of the forest and streams, uses who give glory through song. Goddesses, gods, awake from your dreams. Come hither, come nigh, I join the throne. I the great Zeus do so command. Go for it. Sadders and nymphs of the forest and streams, uses of grease who give glory through song. Goddesses, gods, awake from your dreams. I hither, come nigh, I join the throne. The great Zeus do so command. That's great Jonathan and we could talk about that later and how that felt. Trying all those different avatar bodies on and what happens to yourself, your own physical body as you're doing this, what happens to your mind as you're doing this. So thank you for making those changes. And Jonathan's gonna come out of headset. We're gonna come out of Mount Olympus. Thank you so much digital audience for joining us there. We're gonna jump into a Q&A. And so for those of you on Facebook, if you've got questions for us, drop them into the comments now because we will get to them in one of these sections for sure. We're gonna bring on the love seat team first, the creative team. So Jen is going to come back to the digital stage. Mac Rogers, our playwright is going to join us. And Nick Fortuno, our moderator, who is the founder of Plumatics and a game designer and creative himself. He is going to be moderating and asking us some questions. And so it looks like we've got Mac here on the digital stage. We're gonna be bringing in Nick and Jen will come back to us. And so for those of you on Facebook, you can drop in questions that you might have for Mac about how someone writes who we are and anything for the actors that you've got questions about, I'm sure Nick will have questions for us too. Great. Hi, everybody. Thank you for allowing me to be part of this. It's a fascinating piece that's got a lot of like really interesting, but I think really interesting technical components and really interesting intersection of technology and other kinds of performance. So I guess I wanna start just by asking like how this works generally, like how is it put together and what are the different pieces that are coming together to make this possible? So you know what Nick, that is a really great question. And I feel like I'm actually gonna save that one for Mark and our tech team when we bring them in in just a bit. I mean, I can answer them in kind of brief, but he will do an even better, more technical job than I will. But we are using virtual reality with social VR. We're using a platform called VR Chat. We are typically in our theatrical stage productions. We are using multiple projection screens at Culture Hub. They have this incredible array that we just fell in love with where we had three screens side by side. And we were going to do something similar in a triptych display at the LaMama theater space. And here we're trying all of these production screens and these really mini quadrants right now, as you can see through this kind of multi-camp viewing. So can you talk a little bit generally from like a creative perspective about what's interesting about the intersection of these things for you, because a lot of what we think of as VR is often a very isolated experience. It's often an unsocial experience. And I'm not sure that a lot of people are familiar with the trend in VR to like bring actors into the space and to actually have kind of a social experience in the virtual reality. So can you talk a little bit about what interests you, like as creatives, what interests you about this work and what do you think I'm telling about it? I can, definitely. I mean, for me, the importance of finger is always to be gathered in community, to be watching something with other people, to be sitting alongside people, gasping moments and crying in moments and holding my breath, feeling like I'm connected to the actors that are on the stage and we're all breathing the same air together. There is something about this sense of presence and realness and living in the moment and something about truth that happens in those spaces. And I'm curious if we can create that in a virtual space, bring an audience, bring actors all together onto this three-dimensional platform and see if we can get to the same place of meaning and truth together. But maybe that's also a good one for Mac, too, about mixing these things. Yeah, it's interesting. You know, when Keira first approached me about doing the project, I was like, I seem like a really weird fit for this because I've mostly done theater. I've written some audio recently, but I've mostly written for live theater and I was sort of making the mistake of thinking, okay, well, VR is the thing that's even more cutting edge than or even newer than film or television. And I made the mistake of thinking that the newer something is, the further away from theater, it must be. But actually, in the process of saying, well, okay, well, how is this gonna work? What exactly are you interested in me writing? And the more that Keira described the process that she envisioned, the more it became clearer. No, actually, this is a close cousin of theater. This is, she was very much describing a live event, just one that could be experienced from more perspectives. I remember when I wanted to go watch the rehearsals when the actors were in the helmets and they actually had the VR landscape up on a big screen behind them, I found something absolutely riveting about being able to go back and forth between the live performers and their sort of avatar manifestations. And I found it sort of thrilling the idea that some people would be actually in the room during Venice watching their bodies and that other people around the world would be watching how those bodies were being reflected and amplified in the virtual characters. So there definitely was a steep learning curve. It was a medium I had never written before, but in a way I wasn't completely unprepared for it because it did kind of feel like writing a piece of theater. It's a piece of theater that you could access in a lot more ways than I was used to in my little modest black box work in downtown New York. Yeah, I'm actually, I'm really curious about that intersection actually personally. It's like something that I find really fascinating is that like as I've looked at VR and I've seen that the trend of VR was to come at it from a film perspective. That was sort of like one of the big ways that VR was approached, but the more that people have been doing it, the more they've been realizing that theater and immersive theater are actually better analogs for what goes on and it's been leaning more in that direction. So I'd be curious to hear more from people who are writing for the space and people who are acting in the space, you know, and obviously the people here, it's at that end, you know, like what the experience was like for you and did it resemble theater the way you understand your practice in theater? Like was this acting like theater? Was this writing like theater? Or where were the differences and where were the surprising similarities? Actors, do you want to go first or I don't care. I'll start, I'll start just with the writing side of it and then I'll kick it to the actors. It's, I, when I was first talking about it to Kira, I said like, I don't even know what format this is. I don't even know what the words are supposed to look like on the page to write a piece of VR. I was like, I don't even, what is even, is there an accepted format for it? And she said, don't think about it like that. Think about writing a play where kind of more things are possible. They can kind of sprout into a whole new directions. So we sat down and kind of figured it out. We kind of figured it, a lot of the conversation about it was like a play. I wrote it in the same format that I used to write plays as opposed to when I'm writing for audio or for television or film, I used my stage play format. It's just that the stage directions in italics, which normally say something like, Fred goes up the stairs, Wilma sits on the sofa, was suddenly Bruce grows 30 feet high. Abby takes on one of the forms that the audience voted on, like the kinds of things that like, the kinds of things I would be hesitant to write if I was writing a really well-funded Broadway show, I still wouldn't write some of those things. And so I guess the biggest hurdle for me was getting over that hump of, don't stop with my usual self-censorship, my self-limitation of only these things are possible. So try really hard to stay within these parameters and kind of like let myself imagine the walls falling away and there being tons of new things to work in. Although I will say the one little thing I learned about it, if I ever write for VR again, and I hope I will, I probably make the dialogue a little bit easier to memorize it because I definitely felt bad in rehearsal as watching the actors. And when you're rehearsing VR and you've got the helmets on, you cannot hold your script for a week and a half. Most of us learn our lines by holding the, the first week and a half rehearsal, you've got the script in your hand and you're sort of learning the lines without even knowing that you're learning them. And then by the time you need to be off book, you're kind of partway there. That's not a thing with VR. I was watching them with the helmets, I was going, if I ever do that again, I'm gonna take it way easier on them with the memorization. But I'll kick it to the actors now. I'll go. I actually, there are many directors who try to encourage actors to come into rehearsal off book. So that's actually not the worst thing in the world. And dialogue's fine. I mean, the monologues, I think Jonathan and I are used to learning monologues and doing them. So I think you can pick it with breath, it's okay. But it was something in the first week. I remember we were like, oh, we can't hold our breath. And there was a lot of breathing. So I did feel like there was a lot, I mean, the rehearsal process, it just was, and the performing, it just is more technical because you're dealing with technology and your face and your hand are right in front of you. But, and I don't know, like kind of reminding you, like when you were talking just now, Mac, about when you write or read for animation, it's like, yeah, then to like to grow and then the cat can blow up, nothing against, you know, blowing up cat. But, you know, anything can sort of happen. And in acting and doing like voiceover work for animation, you don't ever get to like someone animates and then that happens. And of course our avatars are made by artists and creators, but then we got to control those avatars, which is what you do in VR. But to get to do that live on a safe in front of people, it was just, it just was something so new and exciting. It was like how performing live theater is a little bit scary. It got to be a little bit scary because the technical things might not work. And then what do you do when that happens? Or what do you do when you walk out of your square, which I think I did once. And like hit something. Or we had people watching us. So there was like technical stuff that was a little like, well, I hope this works, but there was something really, and the similarities, there were a lot. We actually did blocking our avatars. We had our page and we figured out our avatars blocking and in relation to Jonathan and I and we'll see each other and the other things on the set that made up this episode. So we did have blocking. And then once I was in there and I saw my avatar and I saw Jonathan, I saw our set. It kind of felt like the same thing to me in a way. Yeah, to jump on that. You know, one thing, Mack, that you made me think of when you were describing the part in the show where Bruce grows to like 30 feet tall is that if you were to do that on stage, you would have to figure out some way to do that so that the actors embodied and you're actually going 30 feet up in the air, right? So that that effect would work. And in film, you would probably do that with effects after the fact and the actor, you know, you're probably in front of a green screen and you're really just imagining it. And what's fascinating about how we did it in the show is, oh, I've got the experience of actually changing my point of view and becoming a 30 foot tall version of this character. So in a weird way, it's almost, there are moments where it becomes more real for the actor more realized than certainly than if you're doing film and in a lot of ways more than you're doing the experience that you have when you're in theater. One way that was really different than I think either film or theater is the fact that, especially, and this is really particular to love seat, we had the opportunity to perform on two stages for two audiences at the same time. So there was actual stage in Venice for audiences there and then there was the virtual stage where the avatars and the virtual sets living and then a virtual audience. And, you know, we had two sets of blocking. I had physical blocking on the actual stage, but then I also had blocking for Bruce, the avatar and VR. And so there's this really sort of fun game of doing two things at once that was really, really new and kind of an exciting challenge to master. Yeah, I mean, I think that idea of two stages, like two simultaneous stages is like one of the most interesting things about the piece because it not only like kind of requires this, like I can see this kind of bifurcated understanding of your own performances and how this is being perceived, but it also means that you're sort of trying to read two things at the same time, you know, and like being responsive to those things. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about like what that experience is like. And, you know, given that this is something that, you know, A, in the context we're in right now is gonna probably be happening, things like this are gonna be more common where you're trying to interface with through a digital platform, but also, you know, pieces that have blend this mixed reality are gonna be more common. Can you talk a little bit about like, like how, what was that experience like and like what was that like patting my head and rubbing my stomach at the same time sensation? Jonathan, you wanna go first? Sure, sure. It reminded me a little bit actually of the experience that I've had when I've been a puppeteer and that I have an awareness of both my body as the performer, but also the puppet's body and the puppet's life and its agency as a character. And what I'm trying to express through the character of the puppet, puppet, but also knowing that I'm a part of that as well. And just like in puppetry, you know, your bar patrol character. So I'm both Bruce on the actual stage and in the virtual stage just as when I'm a puppeteer, we're creating one kind of character. So it reminds me a bit about that, but I think the other element is that there's a huge amount of trust that I know that for myself, I was placing on our digital camera people who are in the virtual world and who are capturing what the audience is seeing of Bruce from that point of view. And, you know, you don't really have that experience very often on stage unless you're using a lot of camera work on stage. And so that was kind of a unique thing to sort of balance those two experiences as an actor of, you know, trusting that you're playing to the camera, but you're also playing to an audience with you. I would say along with that, with the whole, this thing that was a little pat my head rubbed my stomach was, we were on a stage with a live audience. You couldn't move too far because of the cameras of the VR. And then also inside on our live stage in VR, we had cameras. So it was kind of like blocking for camera. So it's a little like working in television, working in theater. It was a little bit of both. And also sort of making sure that like, your avatar was calibrated. Sorry, that's what calibrated means. Or this is what uncalibrated means. So it's just sort of, like Jonathan was saying, there's just a sense of awareness that you had to have, that I had to have that seemed just a lot more focused and acute than on a stage when you didn't have to worry about the extra element. But also the thing that's sort of very interesting about that is it forces me to be a lot more specific about certain things. So, you know, one move of the avatar's head or one something, I knew that it was on a big screen that the audience could see that. So I would say, if I just did like one move with my head, I knew what was behind on a big screen and my avatar was just doing one move that's gonna visually be a more prominent picture than watching like a character on stage do that move. So it felt, you know, it felt also like just visual art as well, like moving visual art. It was very fun. It was very fun. So I'm kidding. I like it. This is from the studio that we have to move on to the tech team now, but for anyone who's been asking questions on Facebook, leave those in the comments and we'll get back to you for sure. We'll leave answers there. And so we will be playing a piece of video art from filmmaker Michael Woods, something that we showed in our AR and Sully's room. And we will be transitioning Jen and Mac and Jonathan all stage and bringing on the tech team from both Love, Feet and Pandora X production. Thank you all. Thank you, Matt. And we're back. So we have now brought to the digital stage here the tech team behind the production of Love, Feet and Pandora X in our top right corner. We have Chris DePino, one of our technical producers. The bottom left, we have Laura Bucheray, creative producer. Mark Sternberg, technical producer and Chris Dawes, producer production manager. And of course, Nick, our moderator. So Nick, back to you. Great. So I think we should just start by talking about like, okay, like how, what is this technically and how, you know, how does it make possible the kind of like multiple versioned and live and social experience that we all witnessed? Yeah, so I mean, for the moment, we're relying on other platforms. Initially when we did this, we were using high fidelity. Now we're using VR chat, they're both similar. They're in that they're like game environments that allow you to sort of use your VR headsets, track certain elements and then carry them over. And yeah, in that end, it's, you know, we can do, we've been doing performances that exist both in the virtual world and the real one and sort of take elements of both and portray to both audiences. And we've actually found interesting ways that I share a few of them with an idea for how we would love to use like a webcam to show the virtual audience to the real audience and vice versa. So there was even like a video feed with virtual space that connected to audiences. Oh, I think one element that was very apparent when you see the performance live is that every virtual element, whether it's a camera or actor, requires that they be set up with their own computer rig. And that in this case, that ended up being 14 computers at home and a different person manning each one of those computers. So you're not necessarily cutting down on the amount of crew one might need to pull something like this off. In fact, you're just putting a giant computer on each crew member, essentially how it works out. Yeah, so it's interesting that you bring that up because a question from the feed has been about like whether any, there was anything algorithmic going on in terms of how cameras were operated or if there was any artificial intelligence that was helping like make sense of what was going on in the virtual space. And so are you, I think you're suggesting that the answer to that question is no, but I'm curious to hear like how much of it is like actually like a live camera crew like operating in the space and how much of it, how much is the technology lifting some of that for you? Yeah, we're doing it live for right now. What we did with Love C is initially we had different locations that we could work to. So that sort of captured like we knew the blocking and we knew where we were gonna end up. So we could put camera angles where we needed to be at specific moments. But yeah, AI is an interesting idea, but one of the things you know is, it's basically cinematography, right? So at the end of the day, there is a certain degree of development of how am I framing this camera? What is the camera angle saying about what I'm seeing on screen that an AI, yeah, you can probably trick an AI to constantly doing like rule of thirds, but to do something more complex, you know, that was still a couple of years away at least. If I can jump in, I would say, you know, for people that are sitting at home and wondering about their industry is especially the entertainment industry where it feels like things have halted. I see the potential for new jobs here for virtual cinematographers. I think that there is a possibility of a new kind of digital storytelling where we can be capturing an engine and exporting that for these other types of formats. So what does that mean in terms of the production process that you were moving? I mean, I think that provides like this interesting lens on the whole piece, like sort of knowing how many people were involved and like how much like, you know, computer is interesting as analogs for people and like how much, like, okay, there's a lot of things coming together to make this piece happen and these pieces happen. So how does that work as a technical production reality? Like, is it, you know, how are you prototyping in? What does the handshake look like? And if it's, or more maybe from the rehearsal side, like, is it something where the tech is ready and then you're bringing actors in? Is it something that's going hand in hand the entire time? Like, give us a lens on like what the development process looks like for something like this. Mark, you wanna take that first? Yeah, yeah. So it's, I mean, it's constantly iterative process. You know, we're constantly using new platforms, constantly seeing what they can do. The platforms themselves are constantly developing. Even for Love Seat, you know, we didn't use high fidelity shared at the box. We use high fidelity plus a ton of code that gave us certain things that, you know, made our production run a whole lot more smoothly. Moving camera options, mirrors for our actors so they can see their, you know, their avatars, calibrations and stuff like that. VR chat, just like release, you know, a new coding and scripting option called Udon a couple of days ago. We haven't gotten the chance to play with that yet, but this is a constantly moving field. Even the platform we're using right now, PeltzerHouse is, you know, creating this platform called LiveLab, which allows you to do multi-layered streaming and stuff. And it's what we're using to actually stream all these, sending all these streams together and then mixing them into setting them out to you. So, you know, a lot of this stuff is brand new, cutting edge and, you know, has its kinks, but we work it out and, you know, you get through it. And if I could add to that too, I think in narrative storytelling, you're just constantly trying to find a way that technology as a medium can meet your needs for getting that narrative across to people in a way that you wanted to. And I know Kira could attest to this, but you're just constantly trying to use whatever tech you're available to make that possible. So starting out in Venice, we had a couple of snags based, you know, upon being on a remote island, we had to kind of adapt with what tech we could use, creating a networked experience, and then, you know, having to use tethered headsets when initially we weren't going to. So you're constantly doing these things, whatever you've had to make it work. We use HTC Viatackers too to make sure we matched up well with actors, and that was corresponding well inside the virtual space, and for the remote audience to see as well. So you're just like Mark said, you're constantly iterating and doing what you can to make sure that that story is getting across. Yeah. And a real great deal of collaboration goes into this as well, and this whole field is so new right now that, you know, you really have a lot of people a lot of people donating their brain space to help make things like this happen. And, you know, in the early rehearsals, you know, before I had ever stepped foot in there, you know, a great deal of work had been done to figure out basically what direction this was going and then during the rehearsal process, there was, you know, four of us on the technical side in the actual rehearsal space working. Then at any given time, there might be three others outside of the rehearsal space that we're messaging with. And then on a daily basis, we would hit snags that would require, yeah, that basically would present questions that we don't, that no one in that group knows how to solve or a script that's needed that no one is sure quite how to use. And so there was outreach then to outside of that network. And, you know, it was really actually extremely impressive to watch that unfold, how much help came from just other creators around the world who wanted to see this move forward. I'm noticing we've got some questions from the Facebook group and I think we can actually save some of these acting questions for the next group of people. But just before we switch, Chris Gawes, I know you're newer to our production of Pandora X and our tech team. We had a question earlier about how close this is akin to the film process. You know, are you finding from the film production world that what we're doing, you know, and as Nick was asking about, you know, are we working with the tech innovating it before or at the same time, what do you see in terms of the parallels? I see a lot of parallels. A lot of it personally I find in theatrical just because you're building the sets as well. So you're trying out, you know, a particular set and realizing maybe this doesn't work as well or just needs to be foreshortened. And the advantage of virtual reality is you can change that in a matter of minutes as opposed to having to, you know, tear the set down and rebuild it. And also with film, especially a narrative film, you also could have sets or locations where you could have, you know, weather get in the way. So this is a much more controlled environment. You have a lot more flexibility over tailoring the environment and creativity. As you said, you know, we're using sort of off the shelf avatars and environments in this rehearsal but in our May performance, it'll all be custom artwork like everyone saw in the Love Seat set that was all designed specifically for that performance. And you can tell Jonathan's avatar is very unique and the set is very unique. And we hope to do that with Pandora X in May. So hope everybody can join us then and see how the whole production's evolved. Well, that's great. Thank you guys. So Nick, we're gonna just transition. Everyone from the tech team is gonna go off stage. Nick and I are gonna remain and we're gonna play another piece of video art, some 16 millimeter shot art of an empty chair. To remind those of you that are feeling emptiness and loneliness, again, that we're here with you. This is some art that played in our augmented reality installation during the Venice Film Festival. It was projected on from pretty large screens in that very barren former hospital. So we'll be playing that while we transition the tech team off stage and bring on the Pandora X team in just a while. And this final digital face for the last leg of our Q&A. So again, for those of you asking Facebook questions, we're gonna get to those. We've got Alyssa Landry in the bottom left quadrant corner, our writer of Pandora X and my longtime creative partner here at Double Eye Studios. And the bottom left, we have Jonathan David Martin, who you saw as Bruce and Zeus. Nick, back to you. Sure. So I think, well, as Kira suggested, we'll take it from one of the audience questions first, that on the feed, which is like, how do accurate preparations change throughout the process as a result of all of this? We were just talking about some of the, some of what the technology is doing as development is going on. How does it change being like actors in this space and working with actors in a space like this? Like how do those things transform when you're dealing with this like kind of fusion with technology? Kid, do you wanna talk from the directing point of view or wanna jump in? Jonathan, I think you can talk from the acting point of view. I would like to hear from you. I would like to hear from you. Oh, you would like to go great. All right, I mean, you know, we talked a little bit about it earlier with Love Seat about how one of the sort of fundamental differences is you really do wanna start, you wanna have the lines in a place where you can be in a headset and not be thinking just about that technical part of it much earlier than you would in a theatrical production. And you know, in a way, it's kind of like, it's kind of like jumping into tech from day one. For as an actor, there's a way that rehearsals progress once you bring all of the design elements into the room, lighting, sound, costumes, et cetera, when you're in a regular stage piece. And because of the nature of VR, they're all there from day one. And the upside of that is that as you get closer towards the actual production, there's not this huge shift where suddenly all of these new costumes and lights and sound and all this other stuff is then added on to what you've been doing in the rehearsal room. And suddenly you're kind of creating a whole new production. At least it feels that way. With this, it's actually in a way a lot more organic in that you're learning all of the technical parts of the role along with all of the creative actor parts of it in terms of just connecting with the person that you're talking with and figuring out the journey that your character goes on. Cool. Yeah, so I kind of want to ask again, since we can actually get different writer perspectives on this, what was the writing process like and how did it resemble writing for things like theater or film and how is it different from those processes? Well, for Pandora X, we're really at the very, very beginning of writing the story. The things that I've written for before, I'm coming from a world of immersive entertainment and also from narrative direction of a multiplayer VR game. So as I'm beginning to put the storyline into place, actually, Mac and I were talking about this backstage. I'm imagining a, I guess kind of a spreadsheet where in the middle you have the storyline that goes through, then on either side of that, you're trying to think, okay, what is the player? What is the actor doing in real life? What is he seeing? Is he in the virtual world? Is he in the real world or she? And then for the live audience, what are they seeing and what are they doing? And for the virtual audience, what are they seeing and what are they doing? Because you don't have just a linear storyline that you're playing to one audience as everyone was mentioning earlier. Both audiences have to be given nourishment, shall we say. They have to be given something to see. And our goal, Kira and I, the goal that we have for this particular piece is that it will be very interactive. So then that question is one, you have to ask yourself for every scene. Obviously, both audiences won't be able to do something in every single scene, but that is, in that case, what are they seeing? If the virtual audience is doing something, what is the physical audience doing or seeing at that time? So it's like this huge puzzle piece as you're moving forward with your story outline. You're also trying to imagine what's happening in the virtual world and what's happening in the physical world. And as you imagine that, it pung pung back into the way you're writing it. So for example, the monologue for Zeus, I wrote that first, and then I started to fill in this little outline. And as I was filling it in, I started to think, ooh, wouldn't it be cool if Zeus could throw thunderbolts? So, ooh, all of a sudden I think, okay, I'm gonna put that down as an idea. It's in the virtual world, he's throwing a thunderbolt. And because I'm imagining Zeus as being a little bit, he's gone a little bit cuckoo because all of the other Greek gods have disappeared and only he is still there, kept alive by his great grudge that he holds against Pandora and Prometheus. So he's imagining all these other gods and he's tossing his thunderbolts around, but he doesn't have very good aim. And so he has to say to one of the virtual audience members, hey, could you just like give me back that thunderbolt? Cause, sorry, my aim is a little off. So then we, Kira and I have to imagine, okay, how could we make that happen? Can an audience member pick up the thunderbolt, give it back to Zeus? And then we go to the technical team and say, hey, can we do this thing with the thunderbolts? I mean, this is just like an example. I don't, we haven't even talked to them about thunderbolts. They're probably on stage going, ah, no, thunderbolts, what? But anyway, it's, I really, really enjoy thinking about all these different puzzle pieces and what, not just what is the storyline, but what are all the other elements that we have to think about to make it really fun for all members of the audience, whether they're in the virtual audience or the physical audience. And then that means that they can come back again. If they've been to the physical production, then they can come back another time and join in on the social VR platform and have a totally different experience. And we're trying also to leave a little bit of room for improvisation, so that no matter where you go in the physical world or the virtual world, it will be a different experience each time you come to see the show. Yeah, I mean, that's like a really, I think that's like, you know, it's interesting because I feel like there are these hurdles in the work that are like, you're just making it harder and harder and harder to hold, right? Like, it's like, okay, we're gonna do this on two places at once. And there's gonna be interactivity in both places. And that interactivity has to be interesting for both audiences, because both audiences are seeing that interactivity at the same time. So I guess I'm curious as to like, and this is just, you know, as a kind of games and interactive narrative person, this is where my head always goes, is like, what, how do you think about the interactions that can happen at both levels? And like, how do you line up? How do you answer questions about that? Like, as a viewed experience and a played experience, right? Because there are two different things, right? Like, having an audience member do something that affects what's going on is different than an audience member watching an audience member do something that affects something that's going on. And if it has to work on both sides, like, how are you? I mean, this is a question for everybody, you know what? Like, how are you thinking about things like that? This is the thing that I've been playing within my head, Nick. I think you just, you know, put it so correctly. And maybe that's the theory that I need, but I've been calling it this XR bridge, where we're gonna be bringing these worlds together and these audiences together. And how do we make it meaningful for both of them? And that is the core of everything that we're doing. So that's part of the reason we're trying all these experiments out tonight. So we can find ways to learn from this and then embody them. You know, these are just etchings and sketches right now about what we want to do. And then how can we probably really embody them in this medium and virtualize them and make them incredibly powerful and interactive and make sense for groups of people that are having these different experiences at different levels. Is it purely observational? Is it totally interactive? Is there something in between? And those are all the things that we really have to play with and figure out. Alyssa, do you wanna speak to that as well? I was just gonna say that, you know, it's all very well to talk about tossing thunderbolts around and everything. But at the end of the day, I think it's very important to simplify because, you know, we're all used to VR. And so, but what we forget and what we have to constantly keep in mind that a lot of people aren't, and this is an incredibly, incredibly rich world and their senses are literally being inundated for people who have not done a lot of VR. It's incredible, you're looking around and you're gonna miss a lot of the lines. You're gonna miss some of the action just because your attention is elsewhere. It's like being in an absolutely amazing, incredible fictional world that you're getting to visit. So I think that that's an important element always to keep in mind that it needs to be simple. The interactions need to be very clear, very easily understood and fun, but simple. So simplify, simplify. So at the beginning, you think really big and we can do this and we can do that and we can do the other. And then at the end of the day, they can do one thing. So what is that one thing and what is the most effective one thing that they're gonna do during this scene or that they're gonna see during this scene? Just to add on one thing of that, that the list you reminded me of is how important it is, especially with something that essentially is a new hybrid art form about teaching the audience how to engage with it from the beginning and that onboarding experience that we talk about and that it's something that's important I think anytime that you're performing something, especially for live events, but I think especially for this, there is an opportunity to really have an audience that's very receptive to being shown new rules than they've ever had going to a performance before, whether that's at home or in an actual space. And so you know how we kind of lay out those hardwood as simply as you're kind of putting the list in it? From the get go really I think helps to shape both individuals and audiences as a group, follow you wherever you end up going even if you go to some places where you're layering in a lot of information visually, sonically and otherwise. That's terrific. I'm really, like I'm just gonna selfishly say how happy I am that we ended on the note that this is like cutting edge and that we're all kind of experimenting with it, trying to figure out like what is simple, what is clear, what is powerful and not confusing. So thank you so much for having me and thank you for so much for allowing me to be part of this conversation. It's really like if I can just say it for myself, I think it's really fascinating experimentation and I'm very excited to see so many smart people working on it. Thank you, Nick. Thank you everyone for joining. And I think that's it for tonight. So for those of you who have Facebook questions, we will get back to those on Facebook. You can continue to interact with us there. For those of you more curious about Culture Hubs work and use experiments and dual storytelling, follow them on Facebook, on your website, culturehubs.org, our website, doublei.co. We've got a newsletter you can sign up for and you can share updates with me about upcoming questions on May 16th. We'll be showing more from Pandora X for their experiment. More things we'll be trying. And thank you so much. Back to Maddie. Yes, thank you so much to everybody who joined us, moderator, actors, technologists, writers. It's so cool to have everybody together. And I really get the sense that doublei is a team figuring this out, which is really nice. And I'm sure you're very, very grateful to it. To everyone who's been watching, thank you so much. I think it's so valuable for us to do these open rehearsals but the thing that I've really been missing with doing live streams and doing this sort of work is that afterwards we don't brush shoulders and say, oh, that was really cool, how you did that or I didn't quite understand this or just sharing your favorite moment. So I wonder if there's a way that we can find a way to share those things together in this platform because we're all trying to learn together. And just like Alyssa was saying, it's sort of deeply important to understand what communicates and what resonates. So we hope that maybe you can let us know what you think. And thanks for joining us on this experiment. We hope you'll come back in May. Thank you, Kira. Thanks for joining us on your mama. Thank you all. Have a good night.