Cycle One: Immersive Theatre
Posted: April 3, 2025 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: adobe, cycle 1, immersive theatre, Isadora, premiere pro, theater, theatre Leave a comment »For cycle one, I wanted to take the tools I had been equipped with over the first half of the course and utilize them in a theatrical context.Knowing that I would only be working with a bite sized chunk of work, I decided to revisit a play I had developed in a composition class my first year. It was a 20-ish minute play called The Forgotten World of Juliette Warner. It is a piece that juxtaposes the heroine’s journey with the stages of Alzheimer’s diseases. A theatrical convention of this piece in its initial construction was an ever changing set, meant to reflect the mind of the titular character where nothing is truly settled. Having actor’s move literal mats and blocks constantly was a barrier when establishing the suspension of disbelief. So recently trained in projection mapping, I developed a score around mapping the environments and bringing the audience inside the world.
My original score:
Resources Needed:
- Software: Isadora
- Hardware: Projector, long HDMI cables
- Space & Physical Elements: MOLA access, boxes, rolling boards, or curtains
Steps to Achieve This:
- Organize blocks, rolling boards, or curtains in the MOLA space as the base setup.
- Map the projector to these surfaces.
- Design and program projections to depict the shifting realities of Juliette’s world.
- Create a control board in Isadora for ease of access.
- Source actors.
- Rehearse.
- Present.
In my original score, I had anticipated projecting onto flat surfaces and possibly a curtain. But after our Motion Lab Demonstration, I observed a track for curtains that ran circular which I was immediately drawn to. So the first two days, with the gracious help of my peer Michael, I worked to understand routing NDI sources to 3 projectors in the motion capture lab. Through trial and error, we overcame a major barrier on day 2. When sending an NDI signal over a closed internet connection, many computers such as mine, will not send the signal if a firewall is enabled. After disabling the firewall, I was off to the races.
In IsaDora, I utilized EJ McCarthy’s focus grid to understand how to canvas the curtains properly. This was a meticulous effort that took nearly a whole class. I find that I can often get so focused on the specifics of the work, that I forget to take a step back and look at the big picture. So towards the end of class, I threw up some stock footage on all 3 curtains and to my surprise, I found that nearly everything is more forgiving than the focus grid.
With my surfaces properly mapped for projection, it was time to turn to the script. This piece has always been one that makes me nervous because I want to handle this difficult subject matter with as much care as possible. So to avoid alienating my peers/the audience, I selected a brief snippet that occurs earlier in the play that revolves around a repeated daily occurrence, grabbing coffee. I felt that both the environment and the interaction would be familiar enough to put audiences at ease while also providing a great opportunity to show the evolution of Juliette’s mind. When writing this scene, I found that this scene occurred at these stages of the heroine’s Journey/Alzheimer’s development:
STAGE 3 – Noticeable Memory Difficulties (3A.The Awakening)
STAGE 4 – More Than Memory Loss (3B.Preparing for The Journey)
With one day left in class to work on this project, it was time to generate. Although I did not have this software initially in my score, I decided that Adobe Premiere Pro would be the best canvas to create this scene. I sourced stock footage and audio from both Adobe and Pixabay (an EXCELLENT source if you haven’t checked it out).
I had to source footage that could suggest a coffee shop without needing to be in full focus, I didn’t want the projections to be a focal point for the audience. I eventually settled on a nice loopable clip and to make the transition gradual, I then started the scene with a circular gaussian blur at the center and over the course of the 2 and half minute scene allowed it to encompass the entire video. I then created a sound design based on stock noises. With the audience being on the inside of the curtains, I felt it was important to not only surround them visually, but sonically. I utilized surrounding reverbs and panning to allow sounds to come from specific points in the room.
I moved this scene into my ISADORA file where it replaced the focus grid and easily projected on all 3 surfaces.
On the cue line “my mind” I set up a second scene in Isadora which would be the Doctor’s office. I used a similar approach to the coffeeshop, but reversed the blur effect. I did this to intentionally throw off the audience, to tell them that we were somewhere different, somewhere with much more sterile light, but slowly allowed that to be revealed over time.
With my projections designed, it was time to implement actors. I did source a few actors who agreed to take part in a staged reading of the scene. Given the nature of a class project, all my actor’s eventually backed out which led me to scramble for new actors. When I presented the piece in class, I was only able to give my actor’s their given circumstances and the instruction to follow their impulses. This created a sense of a scene, but led to some confusion in character dynamics and audience attention. For my personal taste, it created some clunky staging, but I was so thankful to have 2 actors who were gracious enough to jump in and with a brief rehearsal, we could have ironed this out.
In the feedback, which was extremely valuable, I learned that there was room to go further with the visual design. While the current projections and sound designs were immersive according to my peers, the same visual on all 3 surfaces created an uncanny blend that actually kind of takes the audience out of it. That being said, I did receive feedback that my approach was tasteful and the blur effect, while discrete, was noticed. Perhaps my biggest takeaway from the feedback was that there is a real opportunity to continually define and redefine the audience relationship. The coffee shop very much sent the message “I want you to be a part of this”, but the doctor’s office provides an opportunity to flip that on its head and push the audience out. When I continue to work with this project in cycle 3, I will explore how lighting can be a tool for achieving this effect. My question I will investigate is, “When can I afford to truly leave the audience in the dark”.
Overall, I am happy with the shape this project took. While it did not look at all how I originally intended, I was pleased to expand my muscles with NDI AND projection mapping at the same time while providing a unique theatrical experience for the audience. I laid the groundwork for a compelling piece and with an updated score and a bit more time, I can lean into the aspects of this project that were lost to time.