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Oculus wants to make immersivevirtual theater a reality

B Y J O A N E . S O L S M A N , S C O T T S T E I N | A P R I L 3 0 , 2 0 1 8 5 : 0 0 A M P D T

Oculus is inventing a new kind of VR experience, coming next year,

that brings a virtual play with live actors into your home. Could it be

the hit VR's been waiting for?

James Martin/CNETJames Martin/CNETJames Martin/CNET

Scattered around Earth, you and other audience members slip on VR headsets

and convene in a common virtual world. As you explore, you're approached by

a character different from avatars you've met in VR before. It reacts to you like

somebody in the same room would, but this isn't a creature of our world. It's

sewn together by the same threads as the rest of this invented universe

unspooling around you. And by following it, you unlock the possibility of a

unique journey.  

Rather than preprogrammed avatars, these characters are all powered by live,

trained actors. Far away on a motion-capture stage, a cast leads you and

others through a performance that's never exactly the same story twice.

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As executive producer of experiences at Oculus,

Rachitsky also helped produce Pixar's first virtual

reality experience, based on the movie Coco. 

James Martin/CNET

Yelena Rachitsky, executive producer of experiences at Facebook's VR giant,

Oculus, describes it as indie video game phenom Journey meets immersive

play Sleep No More. The project, tentatively expected for release next year, is

inventing a new VR format that attempts to widen the audience for some of

today's most exciting VR experiences -- installations with live actors.

"We're really interested in, how do

you create that experience of live

actors without needing to be in a

site-specific location," Rachitsky

said in an interview this month

ahead of the Tribeca Film Festival.

"It's a way to scale."

The idea of VR as immersive

theater is the latest twist on one of

technology's buzziest trends,

attracting giant investments by

heavyweights like Google and Facebook, the latter of which is expected to

showcase its new virtual reality hardware at its F8 developer conference on

Tuesday. Despite the hype, widespread adoption of VR has been elusive.

Without a gotta-see-it experience compelling them to try the unfamiliar format,

consumers have resisted pouring hundreds of dollars into a souped-up

computer and a high-end headset like Facebook's Oculus Rift.

But Oculus' experimental immersive play, even at this early stage, mixes

together some promising ingredients: It builds upon a trend of theater

converging with VR that's spurring some of VR's most exciting experiences,

and it could piggyback on the booming popularity with immersive theater.

Immersive reality

Immersive theater has grown as a trend over the last five years, kickstarted by

the success of Sleep No More, an elaborate film-noir-style riff on

Shakespeare's Macbeth that allows audience members to explore and chase

live actors through a three-warehouse set. The production by Punchdrunk

Theater Company continues to run in New York City seven years after its

debut.

Other immersive theater companies have gained acclaim. Third Rail Theater

Company's Then She Fell, an interpretation of Alice in Wonderland set in a

Victorian asylum, has been performed in a former outpatient hospital in

Brooklyn since 2013. Last year, its Ghost Light was performed at Lincoln Center

in backstage corridors and dressing rooms.

As they've grown in popularity,

immersive theater and escape

rooms have focused on exploring

ways to transport audiences into

storytelling in the real world. In

VR, immersive theater could

attempt the same without a

physical set.

Watch this: What happens inside Tribeca's hit VR experience 'Jack'? 6 : 3 2

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In Draw Me Close, an actor in a  motion-capture suit

embraces a viewer experiencing the interaction in

VR. 

Ron Antonelli for NFB and National Theatre

The blurring between theater and

VR has already begun.

Earlier this year, Third Rail

ventured into virtual reality,

contributing to Wolves in the Walls, an experience that was also under

Rachitsky's wing at Oculus. It premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in

January.

And VR performances in real spaces with actors already exist, too, like Jack:

Part One by Baobob Studios, and Draw Me Close, a coproduction between the

National Theater and the National Film Board of Canada. Using motion-tracking

in a space that's mapped onto a live performance area, audience and

performers interact together as in immersive theater, but the audience's visuals

are a virtual world instead. 

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S I G N U P

There are also live theater performances that are cast into VR, in which

participants beam in from anywhere to be audience members or actors. The

Actor's Theater of NYC has started delivering theater mini-performances and

monologues within the Altspace VR app. Comedy shows are performed there,

too. During a rendition of Hamlet in New York City last year, performers acted

together in a remote location while audience members could virtually attend

and hover around as ghosts.

But the forthcoming Oculus project would represent an advance, allowing

participants to have the interactivity of a live actor without the limitations of a

performance that occurs only in one place. 

It could also create a new business model for VR content. 

A fledgling media format, VR is often criticized for lacking a clear path to

making money at scale. But tickets for Sleep No More, for example, start at

$100 a pop. Piggybacking on the popularity of immersive theater also opens

the possibility of a new business opportunity for VR. 

"At Sleep No More, people are chasing after an experience, they want to have

that special moment," Rachitsky said. In VR, "how do we recreate the special

moment?"