This morning I got the following email with detailed instructions from the producers of Loveseat, Double Eye Productions:
Dear Lovely Humans (and your respective digital avatars),
We look forward to seeing you today for the live show from the Venice Biennale. Our schedule has been shifted, so most importantly, the show will start at 4:30 p.m. CET. Today will be a live dress rehearsal for press and industry in the room, and VIPs like yourselves online. We will whitelist (give you access) to the event domain in High Fidelity around 30 minutes beforehand so you can get settled. The domain name to connect to (using the GOTO button) is: loveseat.
If you are unfamiliar with High Fidelity, you will receive a follow up email with detailed instructions on how to access the show easily. If you have any questions, please respond to this email, and we will do our best to help you out as fast as possible!
Excited to see you and your avatars soon,
The Loveseat Team
So, armed with all this useful information, I was able to join the Loveseat domain and take my seat while the actors got set up:
I noticed that for some reason, I couldn’t switch my microphone away from my Oculus Rift headset to my USB headphones (I decided to attend via desktop rather than in VR), so I just decided to leave myself muted. As it turns out, this was a deliberate decision by the producers to have the audience muted (which makes perfect sense). So I settled for using the emotes in my emote app to wave and clap!
The three actors started off with a dance performance in real life, which we could see on the screen at the back of the stage. Then they put on their VR headsets to start the show! The emcee, named Bartholomew Best, kept a running commentary to engage the audience and introduce them to the game show, called (of course!) Loveseat:
We are then introduced to our two game show contestants, Abby the beekeeper and Bruce the hedge trimmer, where the sets rose up smoothly from the stage floor:
After that, I decided to focus on the play, rather than try to capture pictures or report on the proceedings. I won’t give away any more of the plot, in case you want to see the show yourself! The actors made clever use of the tools available to them in High Fidelity to enhance the performance, things you could never hope to see on a real-life stage!
The show was enjoyable, and I can recommend it, especially if you are the kind of person who is interested in what makes relationships work. The actors had their lines down, and obviously had spent a lot of time learning how best to animate their avatars for this performance. Overall, the production was really well done! If you want a taste of what VR theatre looks and sounds like, Loveseat is the perfect introduction.
If you are interested in catching this show, you must first buy a (free) ticket via EventBrite, giving your High Fidelity user name (so if you haven’t created a HiFi account before, you will have to do that before you try to buy a ticket. Loveseat runs daily until Sept, 7th, 2019.
2 thoughts on “Review: Loveseat Gives Us a Innovative Look at Theatre in Virtual Reality”
Comments are closed.