Episode 24 of The Drax Files : World Makers features MadameThespian Underhill, Actor-director with the Avatar Repertory Theater and Builder/seller of Victorian homes & items, pianos, harpsichords, pipe organs and scripted music. Then there’s more, MadameThespian is one of those rare beasts in Second Life, she’s a Charter Member! Even Lindens get excited when they see Charter Members. Charter Member status means that someone is rather old in Second Life terms, in this case MadameThespian has a rez date of 18th December 2002.
More importantly Charter Members played a very important role in keeping Second Life afloat during its early days. They paid an upfront fee which I believe guaranteed them a 4096m plot for life with no further land fees. However the upfront fee they paid, around USD$160.00, provided some much needed cash to keep Second Life in development.
Virtual worlds, explains MadameThespian, are an extension to the ancient art of live storytelling. The Avatar Repertory Theater have produced many shows over the years including original productions and adaptations of existing works.
They build their own sets and create some of their own items but sometimes someone else makes a better item and they take full advantage of the fact that there are plenty of other content creators in Second Life who create suitable wares for their shows.
MadameThespian comes from, a thespian background. She was a Chicago based actor through most of the eighties but now lives in the mountains of Montana where she is a member of the Montana Shakespeare company. However there are certain areas of acting where the virtual world provides opportunities for actors where the real world may close doors.
This is with regards to age. MadameThespian, who is approaching her 60th birthday, admits that she is outgrowing the age for most Shakesperian female roles, but in a virtual world such as Second Life, this isn’t an issue as she can adapt another avatar and happily go on portraying character roles of many different ages.
However what would MadameThespian like to see going forward? Well she is very forward thinking. MadameThespian wants to see body motion tracking become a part of the virtual world experience going forward as she sees great benefit in this going forward. MadameThespian firmly believes that the quality of avatars going forward will be a lot more realistic and the likes of Philip Rosedale and Ebbe Altberg have touched upon this in their discussion of next generation virtual worlds.
The ability to be able to track body movements could well make the stage production experience an extremely viable virtual reality use cases as new technologies emerge.
As usual Drax has captured the person behind the avatar in a fantastic way. We see the pros and cons of the virtual world stage production compared to the real world production. Whereas real world productions have more life and more feeling for the audience who are present, the virtual world experience has advantages in how it can bring together people from all over the world. The virtual world allows for an easier method to change costumes and sets.
Long term I really do think that virtual reality will be embraced by storytellers.
The video runs for around five minutes and is most definitely well worth watching.
SLURL To Avatar Reperory Theater : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Cookie/201/206/23
SLURL To MadameThespians Fine Instruments & Music : http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Clementina/90/95/35
Thank you so much for a great blog post about the video!
Thank you so much for making the video so very compelling and interesting and we all owe you a hug for your Charter Member commitment.