I’m having a beer and enjoying an Edinburgh fringe show from the front row. But I’m on the sofa rather than a folding chair, there’s a cat on my lap and the beer didn’t cost £6. While the pet and the beverage are optional, the large pair of goggles I’m wearing are not. Much fancier headsets are available but this one – which works with my smartphone – comes with a subscription to LIVR, “the world’s first virtual reality content platform dedicated to theatre”.
It’s fringe theatre in particular that the company has focused on. The 360-degree VR experience situates you in the middle of the front row and lets you immerse yourself in the show. Instead of a conventional film, where the emphases have been predetermined in the editing suite, you can choose what to concentrate on. You can switch focus on different performers as they move around the stage and into the audience and, in a manner that would be downright shifty in the theatre, turn and gawp at your neighbours’ reactions to the show. All of this distinguishes LIVR’s service from, say, the polished and slickly edited productions available online from Digital Theatre, which also tend to have bigger budgets and starrier casts. The biggest actor in LIVR’s current offerings is Gyles Brandreth, whose Hamlet with his son Benet at Park theatre is one of the service’s most watched shows.
Mostly, LIVR gives you a chance to experience fringe shows that you may have missed at a festival and, in some cases, are no longer being performed. Leo Kellgren-Parker, the company’s founder, says: “The majority of our audience is based outside London so they use it as a chance to catch things that may not have toured. We wanted to create a place where people can experience shows when it suits them. I like the idea of someone finding a gem long after it would have gone otherwise.” The current catalogue of 60-odd shows includes gig theatre, monologues, puppetry and comedy, with a new batch of titles added each month.
While some acclaimed fringe hits have been adapted for short TV versions – such as Half Breed and Ad Libido, which both recently became Comedy Blaps on Channel 4 – this is a chance to relive the rough and ready original. It also allows users to graze on several shows, as you might at a festival.
“Internationally, we are seeing binge consumption, particularly from the US,” says Kellgren-Parker. “As they have no name recognition they are picking shows they like the sound of with an entirely open mind. They seem to be watching more shows per month than we had expected people to.”
I start my own fringe binge with Chase Scenes, which I missed at the Edinburgh festival in 2018. Ming Hon’s raw, traumatic and sometimes funny production recreates 60 movie pursuits in 60 minutes. Hon, whose work as a film classifier inspired the show, performs alongside two other actresses. They take turns to wield video cameras, filming each other, with the footage projected on a split screen behind them. If this sounds like it might be quite complicated to follow, the way you choose to frame the action yourself using VR – rather than watching an edited version of the production – neatly complements the performers’ methods. “Almost all my performances use live camera with live projection,” Hon tells me. “I’ve always been interested in how an audience experiences and navigates between watching live performers and the irresistible seduction of moving images on a lit-up screen.”
Watching the VR version of Chase Scenes feels like you are in the middle of the show – props lie at your feet and you twist your neck around to follow Hon running in and out of the audience. Hon says that recording the show was simple. “The camera operator took one seat in the audience and the camera, which looks like a stick with a robot head, sits beside them. I was able to play up and perform to the camera like it was a real human audience member which was really fun.” She has been reflecting on VR within the pornography industry as part of her next show, Exciting Consequences, which explores the tropes and cliches of pornography; VR porn – “about making the sexual experience as real as possible” – is booming.
I check out some more of LIVR’s offerings. The Brandreths’ Hamlet, on a set dominated by a kitchen table, feels a tad flat to me, as does Famous Puppet Death Scenes, which has a set design like a Punch and Judy booth. Neither seems to take great advantage of the possibilities of VR, but then hardly any fringe productions are being designed with the technology in mind. That may change – and VR may well be developed to suit immersive and promenade performances. Electrolyte, a scrappy and energetic bit of gig theatre, is a good VR fit and I’m gripped by the immediacy of Apphia Campbell’s storytelling and singing in Woke. The technology also suits the decidedly analogue For the Record, an intimate solo show by the poet Toby Thompson, in which he shares coffee and LPs with the audience. It’s a black-box fringe experience perfectly preserved: you can look up to the low ceiling, count the audience members around you, and even hear mutterings from outside the venue.
All of these productions were new to me so I watch one of my favourite shows from 2018, Songlines by Tallulah Brown, recorded at Edinburgh’s Pleasance Beside venue. This teen romance, with live music, is even better than I remembered and this time I get a better view as I’m up close and dead centre in the first row. Sometimes that can feel awkward as an audience member – when I saw the unpredictable comic Jordan Brookes in the same venue I was sure to avoid the front row. There are hearty laughs during Songlines, and when I look around at my neighbours I’m surprised to find the venue is probably at half capacity; it’s a striking contrast to the way filmed performances often try to convey a packed audience.
Ming Hon, who is based in Winnipeg, Canada, says that the VR version of Chase Scenes means she can find audiences she’d never otherwise reach. But I wonder if other performers worry about the impact on ticket sales if their show is already available in a sophisticated version online. Although LIVR says it is happy to remove a film from the site when that show is out on tour, the activist and theatremaker Nathaniel Hall says the two are different experiences. He is about to tour the UK with his show First Time, which is also on LIVR. “VR can help us reach people in rural areas, or who are unable to travel, or feel uncomfortable in the restrictive atmosphere of the theatre space,” he adds.
“First Time is a show that transforms people’s attitudes to HIV and HIV stigma – the more people that can access the story, the better. I’m excited about how VR could help address the cost of taking theatre to hard-to-reach audiences in the future. I would love to take 20 headsets to a school, watch the show together and then run a workshop afterwards. With correct investment, this could help get important but expensive theatre and stories into cash-strapped schools and community spaces.”
In the future, VR versions of shows may be used increasingly by theatre programmers too, but Hall also stresses their importance for performers themselves. “I was intrigued to study my own performance using this technology. It’s the closest I’ll ever get to sitting with my audience, kicking back and just enjoying the show.”
First Time is at the Vault festival, London, from 28 January to 2 February, then touring the UK. Exciting Consequences is at Prairie Theatre Exchange, Winnipeg, 19-23 February.
