Just a few weeks in the past, I locked eyes with Sir Ian McKellen as he advised me a narrative about how I used to be born, the place I grew up, and once I would finally die. A number of the particulars have been somewhat off, however others have been so unsettlingly on the cash that it felt like he actually did know issues about my life that I’d by no means actually shared with anybody. He advised me to not panic, which was laborious due to how piercing and arresting your complete expertise was.
McKellen’s phrases made me look away solely to search out Golda Rosheuvel staring again at me simply as intently and telling the identical fascinating story I needed to listen to extra of. Her telling of the story was totally different and introduced new feelings into sharp focus, nevertheless it felt prefer it was coming from the identical properly of deep knowledge. And whereas there have been moments when Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy took the narrative to painful, darkish locations, making direct eye contact with them helped me perceive that they have been solely making an attempt to convey some vital truths about themselves.
That is a few of what I felt throughout a latest displaying of An Ark, a brand new play from author Simon Stephens, director Sarah Frankcom, and combined actuality manufacturing specialist Todd Eckert that’s at present operating at The Shed in New York Metropolis. Produced by Eckert’s Tin Drum Theatre Firm, An Ark makes use of augmented actuality glasses to create a combined actuality expertise that brings you head to head with the play’s actors. The play builds on Tin Drum’s earlier experimental productions like The Life — a combined actuality present during which efficiency artist Marina Abramović paces round whereas disappearing — and Medusa, an set up that used Magic Leap 2 headsets to show digital structure in an empty artwork house. However the brand new work deploys its expertise in a novel means that makes it really feel like you might be greater than an viewers member.
I and some dozen different individuals in attendance weren’t precisely certain what to anticipate earlier than the efficiency started, nevertheless it began to make sense as we sat down in a circle in a darkish, purple room lit solely by the dim glow of a large orb suspended above us. After all of us slipped on pairs of wired combined actuality glasses with the assistance of theater attendants, the room went even darker — a lot in order that we might barely see one another. The darkness and nervous silence made us all look ahead towards the globe, which put our heads within the good place to see An Ark’s ethereal forged members step into focus one after the other.
McKellen, Rosheuvel, Kene, and Sheehy play a quartet of people that have discovered themselves current in a sort of transitional house someplace between life and no matter comes after loss of life. You, the viewers member, full their circle as a newcomer who doesn’t know something about this metaphysical place, and it’s essential to perceive how your life story is a set of experiences that aren’t all that distinctive to you. The characters are telling “your” story by recounting moments from their very own lives, which turn into extra particular and intense because the play unfolds.
Although the forged members aren’t bodily current in the course of the efficiency, An Ark’s sparse manufacturing / lighting design and its use of MR by means of AR headsets makes it really feel like they’re all sitting simply ft away. Frankcom — who has been open about not being particularly concerned about expertise — directed An Ark as a conventional theater present that places extra emphasis on its actors’ performances versus elaborate units. However by capturing these performances with a volumetric video system consisting of 52 cameras, she is ready to current them in a means that makes An Ark really feel unusually haunting and like a chief instance of how this sort of expertise can create new methods of experiencing conventional theater.
As fascinating as every of An Ark’s performances are, what actually sells the play’s otherworldly components is the best way the MR glasses depict every actor — who recorded your complete present as a bunch in a single take. The actors seem shut sufficient and clearly sufficient that it looks like you possibly can attain out and contact them. However in sure moments, that readability offers strategy to a little bit of visible warping and wiggliness that’s brought on by the glasses. It doesn’t fairly break the phantasm of the actors being within the room with you, nevertheless it offers them an uncanny, ghost-like high quality that performs into the present’s exploration of loss of life.
An Ark’s best feat is an emotional one which takes kind towards the top of its 47-minute runtime. After recounting the arcs of their very own lives, the play’s characters left me serious about how a lot of myself I noticed in them, and the way the issues that didn’t resonate with me personally would possibly communicate to the opposite viewers members sitting round me.
As all of us padded out to gather our sneakers (you need to take your sneakers off), I heard different individuals speaking about how An Ark made them really feel like that they had turn into related to one thing bigger than themselves — not in a non secular sense, however by way of having shared a really intimate expertise with a bunch that left us all serious about how related we’re. I hardly ever discover myself moved once I’m making an attempt out new tech for the primary time, however An Ark confirmed me simply how powerfully AR can improve artwork that’s already stunning.
An Ark is now displaying at The Shed via March 1st.
