07/12/2020

Pandemic sparks new formats in the theater scene.

Atrizes do The Tempest com equipamentos de realidade virtual durante experimento no IMPA

Faced with the limitations brought about by quarantine, the cultural scene has suffered serious disruptions and is having to reinvent itself. In the case of theater, the possibility of adapting plays for home productions has opened up horizons for a hybrid format, which has technology as an ally. Directed by Cássia Vilasbôas, the play "Lá fora, temporal" was broadcast on a streaming platform in the form of a "cinema theater." The audience could interact with the four cameras showing the performance, choosing the angles they wanted to watch.

The innovations brought about by this and other plays created during the pandemic, such as the restaging of Nelson Rodrigues' classic "Anjo Negro" by Antonio Quinet ; and "Histórias de Confinamento" by the Minas Gerais-based company Grupo Galpão , point to a future of entertainment that Visgraf (the Computer Graphics Laboratory of IMPA) has been envisioning for some time. With projects that are at the forefront of technology, the group has been improving VR Kino+Theater , a software that integrates traditional forms of theater and cinema, for example, with advanced technologies.

With an interdisciplinary team comprised of performing arts professionals, designers, and computer scientists, they presented The Tempest to the public in 2018 , an experiment based on Shakespeare's play that combines theatrical performance, live cinema, virtual reality, and gaming technology through VR Kino+Theater. In the show, which was screened several times at IMPA, the actors were fully immersed in a virtual setting, and the live performance was displayed to the audience on a cinema screen with real-time computer graphics under the interactive control of the director.

According to Luiz Velho , lead researcher at Visgraf, the adoption of new technologies and formats by traditional theater companies, accentuated by the period of social isolation, indicates that the research developed at Visgraf is “on the right track.” “This shows that research, when well done, anticipates societal movements that actually materialize. There was already a latent trend towards greater adoption of new media, but people were still accustomed to the traditional. The pandemic exacerbated this. The media of the future is already happening, and we are helping to build it, taking advantage of this acceleration caused by the pandemic to enhance it.”

The increased audience interaction with the work through camera choice and the concept of "live cinema" are some of the components of the new theatrical productions that have already been explored by the IMPA laboratory, explains Velho. "In Tempest's experiments, the film director is like a DJ. He creates controls for certain shot styles and implements them during the performance with the help of intelligent programming. On a smaller scale, it's similar to what's being done now in cinema-theatre productions, but those productions don't have the resources to use advanced technology."

And Visgraf has been working to deliver these tools to society. “In the lab we use expensive cameras for capturing gestures and movements. We are developing a more accessible program. All it would take is a webcam and a decent computer for the director to do this capture. We believe that in two years the new technologies should be much more widespread,” says the researcher.

The shift in entertainment formats driven by technology is refreshing for audiences, who can now interact more actively with the work, and a challenge for creators, who will have to develop a new language. “We will have shows that take place at different times, in which each person participates in their own way. Whoever conceives the show creates an environment conducive to this. The spectator can, at one moment, watch passively, observing an action and discovering new things, and at another, interfere in the action.”