"Suddenly it was just me and Hamlet, alone in the early dawn. I felt what Hamlet must have been thinking: Was it all a dream? Am I losing my mind?"
A conversation hosted by Lincoln Center and Hearst that reimagines the possibilities of the concert hall experience with Soledad O'Brien and guests from National Sawdust, SoundBox, and Hamlet VR
In April 2017, we presented To Be With Hamlet at the Tribeca Film Festival. Four audience members watched simultaneously in the VR Arcade at the festival, while our actors performed live in our mocap studio in Brooklyn. We performed for nearly 400 audience members over the course of four days.
Adario Strange wrote in Mashable, “I felt like I was taking part in something from the future.”
Read it here: https://mashable.com/2017/04/26/tribeca-film-fest-virtual-reality-experiences
Javier Molina and David Gochfeld have made a contribution to IETM.org in its publication Fresh Perspectives/6.
Mixed Reality and Theater of the Future is written by Joris Weijdom, a researcher from HKU University of the Arts, and its focused on innovative processes for contemporary performance.
Read about the timeline and the process to create "To Be With Hamlet," the motivations behind the project and the results of a innovative approach to theater.
Shanghai, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco and many other cities in the world have found a smart way to monetize from the recent boom of virtual reality. Just like in the 90's, small business owners like Kishore Doddi from VR bar, are offering places for players to use the latest consumer VR systems in dedicated facilities. Hamlet will make it to your nearest VR arcade to offer you a chance to be with the Prince of Denmark in this incredible production. Check out this article published by Technical.ly here
In China they are sometimes called VR Parks, this model will mean more and more people are exposed to VR experiences. When we presented To Be With Hamlet in Shenzhen last year, we saw the potential of this model of distribution are we are excited to create more content for you.
This week, the prominent Dutch Newspaper Het Financielle Dagblad, published "Participating is Important Again," a small informational bio on To Be With Hamlet!
For all of the latest news about the Prince, make sure to follow him on Facebook and Twitter!
FuturePerfectMachine, a San Francisco based VR and geospatial technology blog, wrote an article giving a broad and somewhat technical overview of the Prince's production.
Recently, NYU Shanghai's "Innovative Scholarhship" blog posted, "To Be or Not Be: Staging Hamlet in Virtual Reality," a short interview with Christian Grewell, the creative lead of our M3diate VR platform.
Group Photo Courtesy of NYU Tandon (Camila Ryder)
NYU's Tandon School of Engineering wrote an article on To Be With Hamlet which detailed our production's technical breakthroughs and challenges, including our effort to track the faces of our actors during the performance in the same way that we track their bodies.
The Prince was featured on Technical.ly, a prominent online technology magazine. April Joyner, who wrote the article on Hamlet, had this to say about the experience:
"For my part, after being dazzled by the VR technology, especially the ability to “teleport” among different perspectives of the action using video game controllers, I found it intriguing to see the ghost of Hamlet’s father up close, as Casey delivered a rousing monologue, and imagine what encountering such an imposing presence might feel like."
Check back next week for more news about the Prince!
The awesome Peter Feld, the Director of Research at The Insurrection, one of NYC's top VR publications, sat down with our Producer Javier Molina and Assistant Director Owen Bell to talk about creating Hamlet in VR.
Check out the article and interview here.
