Abstract

It is only recently that VR has become one of the most sought out technologies to create a narrative experience. However, as David Z. Saltz points out, ‘scholars and practitioners have yet to settle on a name to describe performances that incorporate digital media’. In this article, I extend Jennifer Parker-Starbuck’s concept of ‘cyborg theatre’ to the three technological retellings of Shakespeare – To Be With Hamlet, Hamlet 360, and The Under Presents: Tempest – and demonstrate immersive VR theatre as a site where the possibilities of shifting subjectivity materialize. The first section explores the nature of VR in theatre through its central function. Focusing on my experiences of the productions, I explore the cyborgean intersections in VR theatre via the sense of immersion, and highlight how the immersive power of VR incites reflections on the impact of new technologies on the body and the subject of the audience. Based on an examination of immersion, the second section focuses on the audience’s embodied subjectivity and argues immersive VR theatre as a site where alternative corporeal and technological configurations could be tested out. I am especially interested in how sensory immersion in VR, unlike existing claims on it, relates to the materiality as well as the imitative representation of a fictional world.

摘要

直到最近，VR 才成为创造叙事体验最受追捧的技术之一。然而，正如 David Z. Saltz 指出的那样，“学者和从业者尚未确定一个名称来描述包含数字媒体的表演”。在这篇文章中，我将詹妮弗·帕克-星巴克的“机器人剧院”概念延伸到莎士比亚的三个技术复述—— 《与哈姆雷特在一起》、《哈姆雷特 360》和《地下礼物：暴风雨》– 并展示身临其境的 VR 剧院，将其作为转变主体的可能性实现的场所。第一部分通过其核心功能探索剧院中 VR 的本质。以我的制作经验为重点，我通过沉浸感探索虚拟现实剧院中的机器人交叉点，并强调虚拟现实的沉浸式力量如何引发对新技术对身体和观众主体影响的反思。基于对沉浸感的考察，第二部分侧重于观众体现的主观性，并认为沉浸式 VR 剧院是一个可以测试替代物质和技术配置的场所。我对 VR 中的感官沉浸感特别感兴趣，这与现有的说法不同，