Immersive Theater: CIM Collaborates with the Brind School

In the fall, new approaches to design emerged in a different way at the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts, where a burgeoning collaboration with UArts’ Center for Immersive Media (CIM) shifted the theater experience for actors and audiences this fall, setting the stage for future technologically forward endeavors.

While developing a production of I Want a Country—Greek playwright Andreas Flourakis’ exploration of immigration and the loss of social stability—director and Associate Professor Fadi Skeiker hoped to portray the feeling of being on a boat alongside Syrian refugees bound for Europe through traditional theater constructs. Former Dean Kym Moore surfaced the idea of incorporating projections into the production and, Skeiker said, the notion started small but quickly swelled, as the possibilities of projection-mapping were revealed.

Working closely with CIM Director Alan Price and students, Skeiker explored projection-mapping techniques, which transform irregularly shaped surfaces into displays for video projection, to make the audience feel as if they were on a boat in the middle of the ocean. The end result was so effective that a colleague told Skeiker he felt seasick while attending a performance.

The projections supported the ensemble cast as it interacted with the audience, encouraging the latter to move from one refugee tent to another and eventually leading it onto the boat bound for Europe. Seiker said the immersive elements were critical to the success of the production, since all the actors were required to wear face masks, which affected two of their most important theatrical tools: facial expressions and the quality of their voices.

Skeiker and Price’s united vision prompted Flourakis to call UArts’ production “one of the most beautiful” mounted in the decade since he wrote I Want a Country. In working together, Skeiker said, he and Price formed a new relationship that could further integrate immersive technology into the school’s future productions.

“I got to know him as an artist, and we clicked,” Skeiker recalled. “I would say something; he would fly with it. He would suggest something; I would agree on it. So we have this collaborative chemistry between us.”