Tele-immersive improv effects of immersive visualisations on rehearsing and performing theatre online

Branch, Boyd, Efstratiou, Christos, Mirowski, Piotr, Mathewson, Kory W. and Allain, Paul (2021) Tele-immersive improv effects of immersive visualisations on rehearsing and performing theatre online. In CHI '21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. 13 pp . (doi:10.1145/3411764.3445310).

Abstract

Performers acutely need but lack tools to remotely rehearse and create live theatre, particularly due to global restrictions on social interactions during the Covid-19 pandemic. No studies, however, have heretofore examined how remote video-collaboration affects performance. This paper presents the findings of a field study with 16 domain experts over six weeks investigating how tele-immersion affects the rehearsal and performance of improvisational theatre. To conduct the study, an original media server was developed for co-locating remote performers into shared virtual 3D environments which were accessed through popular video conferencing software. The results of this qualitative study indicate that tele-immersive environments uniquely provide performers with a strong sense of co- presence, feelings of physical connection, and an increased ability to enter the social-flow states required for improvisational theatre. Based on our observations, we put forward design recommendations for video collaboration tools tailored to the unique demands of live performance.

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Contributors

Author: Boyd Branch

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