{"id":249890,"date":"2026-01-21T12:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/249890\/"},"modified":"2026-01-21T12:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:52:11","slug":"a-new-form-of-theater-can-ian-mckellen-52-cameras-and-mixed-reality-reinvent-a-medium-us-theater","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/249890\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A new form of theater\u2019: can Ian McKellen, 52 cameras and \u2018mixed reality\u2019 reinvent a medium? | US theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

You sit in a circle at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan\u2019s futuristic Hudson Yards, waiting for the show to begin. Through your enhanced glasses, you see four empty chairs facing you, just out of reach. You watch strangers look out for the actors to arrive. As they do, one at a time, you feel unsettled \u2013 each locks eyes with you, specifically. \u201cDon\u2019t panic,\u201d the esteemed British actor Ian McKellen<\/a> assures you, as the actors take their seats.<\/p>\n

Except the actors are not there, really \u2013 McKellen, along with co-stars Golda Rosheuvel, Arinz\u00e9 Kene and Rosie Sheehy, appears in An Ark, a new play at the Shed, in video form, a nearly opaque specter overlaid on the candy-apple red carpeting and crisp white walls of the theater and the outlines of your 180 or so fellow audience members. The experimental new play, written almost entirely in the second person by Simon Stephens (whose most recent show, the Andrew Scott-starring Vanya<\/a>, wowed audiences at the Lucille Lortel theater last year), is one of the first so-called \u201cmixed reality\u201d shows staged in New York, blending physical experience with digital elements. Over 47 minutes, the actors address you, the viewer, directly. Their gaze remains trained on you. Don\u2019t panic, they repeatedly assure. (Though due to some technical malfunctions at the preview I attended, there was some panicking.)<\/p>\n

And don\u2019t confuse it with VR (virtual reality), the oft-maligned virtual headset technology of Mark Zuckerberg\u2019s metaverse or Apple store demos. The distinction between mixed reality and VR is \u201cvery important to me\u201d, said Todd Eckert, the show\u2019s producer, in an interview at the Shed a few weeks before previews. The former combines elements of the physical and digital; the latter is full-on immersion into the digital \u2013 \u201celective isolation\u201d, as Eckert puts it, akin to riding a packed subway while only looking at one\u2019s phone screen. \u201cI don\u2019t see the point of exacerbating that,\u201d he said. \u201cThe reason that this is an experience without a screen, that we\u2019re using this technology that not a lot of other people are using, is because you see each other and you see the room. Your experience is one of being connected \u2013 that\u2019s the whole point of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n

The production of An Ark. Photograph: Marc J Franklin<\/p>\n

Mixed reality is already well integrated in our tech-saturated lives \u2013 you experience it watching the computer generated first-down markers on any US football game broadcast, or via the translucent dashboards on new-model cars. But it has rarely been used in a theater context, in part because volumetric capture, the process of filming real subjects in three dimensions over time, struggles to record subtle detail.<\/p>\n

Eckert and the company he founded in 2016, Tin Drum, have been working to change that. In 2019, Tin Drum produced The Life, featuring a hologram of Eckert\u2019s partner, the renowned performance artist Marina Abramovi\u0107<\/a>, in physical space. (Growing pains \u2013 the Guardian panned<\/a> the experience as \u201ca pointless perversion that hurts your eyes\u201d.) In 2023, he produced a virtual, 3D concert featuring the composer\/computer-pop pioneer\/actor Ryuichi Sakamoto, who died before its release. (A \u201cmagical experience\u201d, the Guardian raved<\/a>.) An Ark attempts to refine the technology even further, presenting, for the first time, four actors at once \u2013 filmed by 52 cameras in one take at a studio in the French alpine town of Grenoble, but seated just before the viewer, as if for a private show.<\/p>\n

The concept for An Ark arose from conversations between Stephens and Eckert, longtime friends, wondering: \u201cWhat can we do that isn\u2019t possible in theater?\u201d Eckert recalled. \u201cThe technology is fundamental to being able to take a thing and give it to the public in a certain way,\u201d he added. \u201cBut I never want people to think of this as an expression of technology as opposed to an expression of humanity.\u201d The first line of the show\u2019s program bluntly states: \u201cAn Ark is not a work of AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stephens began work on the show, which spans the arc of four separate lives from birth until death, in 2020, when questions of mortality, technology and the vitality of human connection seemed especially pressing. The sweeping, open-hearted themes attracted director Sarah Frankcom, a dramaturge with a murderers\u2019 row of live-theater credits in the UK, though she was skeptical of the technical elements. \u201cI don\u2019t understand anything about technology. I\u2019m not really that interested in it,\u201d she admitted in a recent interview at the Shed, a week into previews. \u201cMy work has been very actor-centered, very writer-centered, very much about openness, connection, the way that live experience can momentarily hold you in a space and allow you to feel and see something differently.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she found \u201cfreedom as a theater artist\u201d in the limitations of the volumetric video system, run by company 4Dviews, which, like a standard performance, filmed one whole show at a time. Frankcom cast, directed and rehearsed as if it was a standard play. \u201cIt was a completely identical experience,\u201d she said, \u201cit\u2019s just that we had our performance ready before we went to create the environment that it was going to be presented in.\u201d Staging is minimal \u2013 the actors walk on and off \u201cstage\u201d, but primarily remain in their chairs. The notable distinction is the steady eye contact, maintained throughout the show, no matter where or when you look for it \u2013 a \u201cbreakthrough moment in terms of what the technology can do and making a new form of theater\u201d, said Frankcom. \u201cIt allows you to be present with the actor on your own terms, and that\u2019s very different to watching film, it\u2019s very different to watching theater. You have a direct and pure relationship, and you do feel seen.\u201d<\/p>\n

The effect is uncanny, sometimes intentionally (meeting Sheehy\u2019s intense gaze, I felt a little too seen) and, perhaps, unintentionally (due to the projections\u2019 hazy edges, it appeared as if their feet melted into the floor like Salvador Dal\u00ed\u2019s clocks). Eckert conceded to some limitations, particularly regarding the final take\u2019s resolution, in stark contrast to the pinprick hyper-reality of Apple\u2019s Vision Pro headset<\/a>. But the quality of the illusion, he maintained, was second to its connective potential. \u201cVR takes away even any potential for human interaction,\u201d he said. \u201cEvery time I\u2019ve watched [An Ark], I\u2019ve seen people that are in a completely different chunk of life than I am. And the fact that they were responding actually gave me hope for humanity. Which sounds overblown, but it\u2019s true. That\u2019s what I want out of this. I want something that really leans into the connection. And for me, resolution has very little to do with that.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen it finishes, and people take their devices off, it feels to me like it\u2019s a room full of people that have been on a journey and been through something together,\u201d Frankcom added. \u201cI\u2019ve had people talk to me in a way that I\u2019ve never had them talk to me at the end of the theater show.\u201d<\/p>\n

The cast of An Ark in rehearsal. Photograph: Tin Drum<\/p>\n

Technical limitations aside, both expressed enthusiasm for the modality\u2019s potential \u2013 for making intimate theater performances more accessible, at a time of soaring Broadway prices (I, for one, could never afford to sit front row at a McKellen performance), and for preserving the work of great actors, like McKellen, with more vitality and immediacy than standard filming. \u201cThere\u2019s something very simple and very pure about what we\u2019ve made that feels like it\u2019s the first letter of an alphabet,\u201d said Frankcom. \u201cAnd to not know what the rest is, I think is probably good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTechnology is forever being heralded as this thing that\u2019s going to solve all of these problems,\u201d said Eckert. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t know that it has. But forever, longer than any of us will be alive, people will sit down and feel that Ian, Golda, Arinz\u00e9 and Rosie are staring them right in the eyes. That\u2019s a result to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether the technology is ultimately alienating or inviting \u2013 whether mixed reality crosses through the uncanny valley or remains somewhere in between is, like any artistic work, up to the viewer. But the importance of live theater, at least to the mixed-reality makers, stays unquestioned. \u201cWe\u2019re in a moment in time where being present feels really, really necessary as a balm to the kind of craziness that\u2019s out of our control,\u201d said Frankcom. \u201cTheater, I think, has a really strong place to bring people together and go: \u2018You\u2019re here. We lived, we\u2019re alive.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You sit in a circle at the Shed, the cultural center in Manhattan\u2019s futuristic Hudson Yards, waiting for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":249891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[458,146,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-249890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-celebrities","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}