Live performance in a virtual world
by Mike Schramm 
Aug 10th 2007 at 12:30PM
This piece on Terra Nova got the gears turning in my head again about something I've been thinking about for a while: a live dramatic performance in the virtual world. The article goes a little deeper than that-- basically, it suggests that we're all performers in the virtual world, and all the world (of Warcraft) is a stage for us to perform on. You may not be a roleplayer, but you still play a role in the game, whether it be the stalwart main tank or the ganking PvP moonkin.But I'm talking about something a little more concrete: an actual dramatic production performed inside a virtual world. Unfortunately, my background in drama is tiny (I did some production stuff in high school and college), which is probably why I've never mustered up enough effort to pull it off, but others have, and I'd love to see more of it. The colorful, fantasy world of WoW seems perfect for putting on a production-- can you imagine Hamlet in the corridors of the Stormwind castle, or The Tempest down in the tropics in Stranglethorn Vale? It'd be a lot of work (not to mention a lot of typing) for all those involved, but a finished, complete production created entirely within the world of Azeroth would be incredible to watch.
There have been a few groups aiming for something like this (the Synthetic Worlds Initiative even planned an entire online world about Shakespeare, at one point, though I'm not sure what happened to it). And I can't believe this idea is original-- someone has to have performed something in WoW at some point, I'm sure; I just haven't heard of anyone really taking the time to do it professionally (and live). We're already playing our own made-up roles in the virtual world-- the idea of going one step further and recreating fictional characters in that world fascinates me.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Physical Original Aug 10th 2007 1:02PM
I had some thoughts about getting people together to do something like this before. I scrapped the idea for two reasons:
1) too much typing to perform a full play (this could possibly be allievated by macros)
2) http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
I think short works and, even better, original works that lend themselves to the available tools would be very interesting and i would absolutely attend/watch something like this.
John Aug 10th 2007 1:30PM
I think it would be AWESOME to walk into Undercity and see people in the middle of a FULL Shakespere (sp) play or whatever. Especially with approriate outfits, props, etc. It's a lot of typing but with practice I'm sure you could get the timing down well
saphia Aug 10th 2007 3:27PM
If I remember right, you all linked to a production some kids did of the Canterbury Tales for their high school class. It was a few months back.
David Bowers Aug 10th 2007 3:29PM
I'm actually in a guild right now that has done this sort of thing in the past. I've been wanting to write about it once we got some new shows off the ground and I could invite everyone to come see them (hopefully not crashing the server). We wrote and performed several plays last year, including a "renaissance faire" type activity called GnomeFest on Scarlet Crusade. We learned that short comedies with lots of dialogue and action, using as many spell effects as possible tend to work best. The relatively slow speed of typing was compensated in various ways, sometimes by copy/pasting things that you had planned out before hand, but mainly we improvised the actual text after planning out and rehearsing the play beforehand. We found our audience to be more than patient for most of the plays -- in spite of catastrophes, such as our star actress/director got disconnected in the middle of a show. If they weren't feeling patient, they usually just quietly left, there was only one real disruption ever -- one warlock once decided to summon an infernal to disrupt our show.
Saphia Aug 10th 2007 3:36PM
wonder if this would be easier and more common once voice chat comes in.
MENNONH Aug 10th 2007 5:40PM
Not sure how it would work with the server load, but in a prior game called "There" they had concerts that you could attend and if you were in the area you could hear them performing.