Reviewed by:

• The Under Presents by Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro
• Devon Baur

During the COVID-19 quarantine, audiences were looking for ways to gather and The Under Presents offered an apt but unusual stage: the promise of a venue outside of time and space. Coined as “immersive live theatre meets virtual reality (VR),” The Under Presents was a quirky, playful, and innovative approach to both synchronous and asynchronous performance in virtual space. The production, directed by Samantha Gorman and Danny Cannizzaro, was created by Tender Claws in partnership with the performance group Piehole, and premiered at Sun-dance 2019 with a live public run from November 2019 through summer 2020. From home, audiences could enter at any time through their own VR headset and either explore alone or serendipitously meet other people. The space held audience members and actors together in a virtual playground that hosted scheduled stage performances and wandering surprise actors to take advantage of VR as an innovative medium to stage a live performance. Through an animated adventure-scape, this work used VR to interrogate uniquely the pliability of time and space, in both the story’s theme and how it brought audiences together.

Upon first entering The Under Presents, each audience member began alone in a dark muddy wasteland. The spectator needed to learn to snap their fingers until mud flew off layer-by-layer and hands emerged. These hands revealed the body that the audience member would occupy and served as the tool through which to navigate the space. In VR, designing audience locomotion is difficult, as creators map large-scale virtual environments that need to be accessed from small rooms. Tender Claws offered “the scrunch” as a creative solution, wherein the spectator needed to reach their hand out and pull the distance toward them: space bent and warped before the world popped back into focus. This action made space malleable in a way that would not be possible in a brick-and-mortar theatre, as each spectator’s hand could pull them through an abandoned vaudeville theatre and the other virtual terrains. The scrunch thematically placed the story-world in a venue outside of concrete space and also, through metaphor, placed the narrative journey in each audience member’s own hands. In the end, it was the spectator’s responsibility to navigate the elastic terrains and dictate how the immersive stories would unfold.

The Under is not only a venue outside of space, but also outside of time; this became clear when the spectator came to meet a past version of themself. Guided by the MC, an omnipresent narrator and venue owner, the spectator entered a world where time folded into itself. Here, they would find themselves exploring the same scene again, stuck in a loop with ghosts that repeat their own movements from past iterations. In the repetition, the spectator could dance amongst their last movements and sometimes needed to complete tasks through collaboration with their past-selves and future-selves. Immersive theatre often blurs the boundaries between performer and spectator, but Tender Claws’s use of VR complicated this even further as the participant was enveloped in an echo chamber of their own past embodiment.

The “performance” occurred in two separate places within the virtual landscape, each with their own distinct mode of engagement. The first took place in a ship-in-a-bottle called Timeboat that hosted a harrowing three-act survival tale of a crew locked in ice. Timeboat is a preprogrammed immersive play that happened throughout the decks and cabins of a ship, where the spectator could not only alter the outcome, but also control the speed and direction of time. The scenes looped and the characters signaled that they were trapped by the MC in an ever-repeating vortex. The spectator could stay and help the characters, or they could exit through a gift shop and wander off into the open desert.

Stepping away from Timeboat, the spectator spilled into the second space for performance: a dreamlike desert landscape with a stage at the heart...

审核人：

• 萨曼莎·高曼（Samantha Gorman）和丹尼·坎尼扎罗（Danny Cannizzaro）的礼物
• 德文·鲍尔（Devon Baur）

在COVID-19隔离期间，观众一直在寻找聚会的方式，The Under Presents提供了一个恰当而又不寻常的阶段：在时空之外建立场所的承诺。The Under Presents被冠以“沉浸式现场影院与虚拟现实（VR）的结合”的称呼对于虚拟空间中的同步和异步性能而言，是一种古怪，有趣，创新的方法。该影片由萨曼莎·戈曼（Samantha Gorman）和丹尼·坎尼扎罗（Danny Cannizzaro）执导，由温德·克劳斯（Tender Claws）与表演团体Piehole合作制作，并于2019年11月至2020年夏季在公共场所进行了现场直播，并在Sun-dance 2019进行了首映。任何时候都可以通过自己的VR耳机进行探索，或者独自探索或偶然结识其他人。该空间将观众成员和演员聚集在一个虚拟的操场上，该操场上举行了预定的舞台表演，并让游荡的演员徘徊，以利用VR作为一种创新的媒体来进行现场表演。通过动画的冒险场景，该作品使用VR来独特地询问时间和空间的柔韧性，

首次进入The Under Presents，每个听众都独自开始在一片黑暗的泥泞荒原中。观众需要学会弹指，直到泥土一层又一层地飞出并伸出手来。这些手揭示了观众成员将占据的身体，并充当了导航空间的工具。在VR中，设计设计者的运动非常困难，因为创作者会映射需要从小房间访问的大规模虚拟环境。嫩爪提供了“紧缩”作为创造性的解决方案，其中观众需要伸出手并向他们拉开距离：在世界重新聚焦之前，空间弯曲并翘曲。这一动作使空间具有延展性，而这在实体剧院中是不可能的，因为每个观众的手都可以将他们拉过一个废弃的杂耍剧场和其他虚拟地形。紧缩主题将故事世界放置在混凝土空间之外的场所，并通过隐喻将叙事旅程放在每个听众手中。最终，观众有责任在弹性的地形上导航并决定沉浸式故事的展现方式。

The Under不仅是空间之外的场所，而且是时间之外的场所；当观众来见他们自己的过去版本时，这一点变得很清楚。在无所不在的叙事者和场地所有者MC的引导下，观众进入了一个时光folded绕的世界。在这里，他们会发现自己再次探索了相同的场景，陷入了重影，这些重影重复了过去迭代中的动作。在重复中，观众可以在他们的最后动作中跳舞，有时需要通过与过去和未来的自我协作来完成任务。身临其境的剧院常常会模糊表演者和观众之间的界限，但是当参与者被包裹在自己过去的回音室中时，Tender Claws对VR的使用使情况更加复杂。

“表演”发生在虚拟环境中的两个不同的地方，每个地方都有自己独特的参与模式。第一次发生在名为“ Timeboat”的一艘装在瓶子中的船上，该船上有一个悲惨的三幕生存故事，讲述的是船员被困在冰层中。时光船是预先编程的沉浸式游戏，发生在整个船的甲板和船舱中，观众不仅可以改变结果，而且可以控制时间和方向。场景不断循环，角色发出信号，表明他们被MC困在一个不断重复的漩涡中。观众可以留下来并帮助角色，或者他们可以通过礼品店退出并漫步到开阔的沙漠中。

观众从时间船上走了出来，冲进了表演的第二空间：梦幻般的沙漠景观，中心是舞台……