Description of activity

The first of the case studies involved an undergraduate class at the University of Red. This class was a group of 15 undergraduates on the Theatre Studies module “Theatre Design and New Media” one of the aims of which is to “develop a critical understanding of the complex and dynamic relationship between design, new media technologies and theatre, their social and cultural values” (Childs and

125 Kuksa, 2009; 1135). Since one of the new media technologies investigated was Second Life I was invited to conduct a session on this by the course leader. The session design comprised:

 An introductory section consisting of a presentation and discussion.  A practice session in which students explored a single theatre as a group.  Wider explorations by the students of theatres in Second Life.

 A plenary session where the students discussed what they had observed about the theatres. The students were given a handout which outlined the timings of the session, and the different passwords and avatar names used by the group.

The introductory session included background information on virtual worlds in general, on Second Life in particular, the use of virtual worlds in performance, a description of the Theatron Project and the performances of Hamlet that had taken place in Second Life (Chafer and Childs, 2008). A discussion took place regarding the nature of virtual worlds, their purpose and the role they could play in performance during this section.

For the practice activity, students chose pairs in which to work and were assigned an avatar to the pair. Students were given twenty minutes to accustom themselves to navigating around the environment and familiarise themselves with the communication mechanisms. During this section the students were given landmarks to four theatres to explore, two based on real world theatres and two theatres created specifically for Second Life. At the end of the practice session they were then asked to teleport to these sites in turn.

For the explorative section, the students independently explored the separate sites, teleporting their avatars to the different locations making observations of the theatres and stages. I dropped in at different locations to observe and record the activities. The sites were:

Real life theatres:

 Theatre of Epidavros.  Globe Theatre. Second Life theatres:  Caledon Gaiety Theatre.  Ballet Pixelle Stage.

126 For the theatres based on real life theatres the students were asked:

 What would be the challenges for actors and designers working in the virtual theatre in Second Life?

 What do you think the challenges for actors and designers would be in the real theatre this model represents?

For the theatres designed specifically for Second Life, the questions were:  How do these theatres/ auditoria differ from real life theatrical spaces?

 What can you determine from the stage design (and any other surrounding spaces) are the nature of the performances, and the communities that built the stages?

The intention was that students would discuss their answers to these questions in the final plenary. For the question on the challenges of performing in Second Life it was anticipated that students would discuss the difficulties of performing through an avatar, of being able to move the avatar and of feeling copresent with the audience. The question on the real theatres the spaces represent would require the students to experience the feel of the spaces, for example the real Theatre of Epidavros is a very large theatre, and so connecting to the audience and making one’s performance large enough is a problem, and the size of the space can be intimidating. The question on the differences between theatres created solely for Second Life was intended to alert students to the ways in which the design of theatres that exist solely in the virtual world can adapt to the functionality of that world, for example the ability of avatars to fly means that aerial ballets are a possibility within the Ballet Pixelle Stage. The question about stage design drew on the students’ experience of the semiotics of virtual spaces; that theatrical spaces are a product of the cultures that created them, drawing on, for example, Aronson (2005; 40):

What distinguishes the theatres of a particular period or culture is the way in which the arrangement of these elements reflects the spatial configuration of the society at large.

The intention here was for the students to observe the detail of the space and of the surroundings of the Caledon Gaiety, to note that the design theme was a steampunk one (a sub- genre of science fiction set in a parallel world in which a high-tech Victorian British Empire exists)

127 and hence to draw the conclusion that the theatre was created to support roleplay activity with participants from that particular subculture within Second Life.

The students were given a questionnaire, completion of which was optional. Two parts of the session were recorded. The first was part of the explorative part of the exercise when the students were examining and evaluating the theatrical spaces. As the students were exploring the theatres, the inworld activities that took place where my avatar was present were recorded as machinima. The transcripts of local chat that took place where my avatar was present were saved as well as some of the conversation taking place in the physical classroom.

The second part recorded was a video of the plenary. This was to provide a transcript of the responses of the students to the experience and capture evidence of their learning. These recordings provided additional discourses to analyse.