We’ve become accustomed to seeing real and virtual actors (or at least extras) blended with real and virtual sets in the movies.
Now it’s being done live on stage:
Using new techniques that merge the Internet 2 with traditional stage theatre, the University of Central Florida, Bradley University in Illinois and the University of Waterloo in Canada performed a play that put actors from Florida and Canada on the stage in Illinois without them ever leaving their respective campuses.
****
A receiving broadband-connected computer at Bradley, which handled as much as 130 megabytes of data a second, was hooked into Shafer’s computer at UCF during the performances March 6-11. That’s how his body was “beamed” onto the stage where he joined live actors from Bradley and another virtual actor from Canada. It was all done in real time and merged with 3-D and 2-D sets on multiple screens. Bradley put together the computer images. At times it was difficult for the live audience in Illinois to tell who was live and who was virtual.
Next year the partners plan to take the virtual stage to the next level – simultaneous performance of actors on three live stages. In that play, “Alice Experiments in Wonderland,” actors from each school will be beamed onto the stages of the three communities and interact together.
If you can do this, there’s no reason you can’t add computer-generated characters to the mix, too.
