The Stage

Illumina Digital to bring Second Life digital characters to stage

Published Tuesday 1 May 2007 at 15:10 by Matthew Hemley

Television production company Illumina Digital is moving into theatre with a play that combines real life actors with digital ones from the virtual world Second Life.

The show, with the working title My So Called Fabulous Second Life, is being written and developed by the company’s head of production Mike Dicks, in conjunction with radio playwright Clare Duffy.

It is based around the funeral of a man who lived two lives - one in the real world, the other in a virtual world on the internet.

In the stage show, human actors will play those people he knew in real life, whereas digital characters will be used to represent those who he interacted with online. It will use technology from virtual reality company Total Immersion to bring the digital characters to life on stage.

Dicks said: “We think theatre has been untouched by the digital developments that TV and the web has seen and we want to apply a lot of what has been done there to the theatre.”

The real world stage performance will be mirrored within Second Life, with virtual avatars recreating the actors’ performances.

Illumina specialises in new media projects and was behind BBC teen soap Wannabes, which allowed users to go online and interact with characters in the show. Casting for the production is expected to take place this summer.