Virtual Dream Reality Check: A Case of Interactive Digital Theatre from the Royal Shakespeare Company

Abstract

The proliferation of digital theatre signals a new era of theatrical experiences. As technology becomes more sophisticated, theatre companies are evolving to accommodate technological innovations. The Royal Shakespeare Company's (RSC) Dream is a recent example of how theatre companies are integrating cutting-edge technology to revolutionise their performances. Emerging from the Audience of the Future (AF) program, Dream combined gaming and theatre technology to create a virtual world for audiences to inhabit and explore digitally. Inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the production incorporated motion-capture technology and Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, allowing seven actors to perform live from a purpose-built studio while audiences simultaneously accessed the performance from a compatible device via a bespoke website (https://dream.online). The resulting experience combined live and virtual performance elements to connect global audiences. This venture into technologically enhanced theatre, however, raises questions about the potential implications of audience engagement with digital productions. In this paper, we question how the RSC's Dream combined both live and virtual theatre experiences to offer a more interactive viewing experience. We argue that while Dream signalled an exciting step in the development of digital theatre, the interactive features revealed some discrepancies between the RSC's goals and the degree of involvement delivered. Instead of drawing audience members deeper into the storyworld of the play, the interactive elements were, for some audience members, distracting. To make this argument, we primarily draw on Gordon Calleja's Player-Involvement Model as a method of analysing Dream's interactive features and how they impacted the audience's experience. We contend that for theatre organisations to incorporate digital technologies, they must tend to the nuances of technological interventions and weave them seamlessly with theatrical elements to retain the fidelity of the theatre experience. In doing so, we first define digital theatre. Next, we turn to the RSC's foray into this genre before outlining the key features of Dream and its development as part of the AF programme. Finally, we analyse the audience experiences of Dream through the lens of Calleja's Player-Involvement Model to determine the overall efficacy of the performance.