Virtual production and the future of live performance: Intermedial trajectories of expanded animation in the immersive production 'Dream' (Royal Shakespeare Company, 2021)

Virtual production has triggered a rapid transformation towards the emergence of new screen forms and formats defined by intermediality (transcending medium borders) and applied convergence across creative disciplines and sectors. This chapter explores the immersive performance Dream (2021) by Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) – an Audience of the Future research and development demonstrator project – developed in collaboration with Manchester International Festival, Marshmallow Laser Feast, and Philharmonia Orchestra. Due to open as a location-based experience in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2020, Dream was recreated as a virtual live performance in March 2021, while theatres remained closed under pandemic restrictions. Inspired by Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and building upon RSC’s The Tempest (2016) – the first live performance using motion capture rendered in Epic Games’ Unreal Engine – Dream merged theatre and gaming technology into a system of virtual production and real-time animation, involving elements of audience interaction. Drawing upon Benford and Giannachi’s theory of mixed reality performance as a complex system of intertwined trajectories (2011), the chapter proposes to explore Dream’s use of virtual production technologies and techniques in terms of intermedial trajectories across screen, performance, gaming, and animation. The process of virtual puppeteering where the actor becomes the marionette and the puppeteer at the same time further entails a convergence between theatre and real-time CGI into new hybrid forms that can be defined as expanded animation. The discussion also explores virtual production as a potential aesthetic regime for developing a creative synthesis between narrative, virtual world, and character design.