Tottering Biped Theatre Take Cyberspace To The Stage With A Performance Entitled The Second Life

I was googling news about Second Life today when I stumbled across articles about Tottering Biped Theatre. One of the issues regarding googling Second Life is that you get a lot of results that are not related to the virtual world. There are plenty of articles about recycling and television shows that are getting a Second Life, but not so many about Second Life the virtual world.

This is sort of the case with Tottering Biped theatre itself, with the exception that they have a performance entitled “The Second Life“, which is about :

The online virtual world of ‘Second Life’ stretches thousands of kilometers and millions of visitors. While searching for her lost sister, Jessica struggles to find out what – and who – are real. Life and its double are at stake in this multi-media exploration of loss in the digital age.

‘The Second Life’ was developed over a 3 year period after winning honours at Ontario’s professional playwright development centre, Pat the Dog. After a sold out run at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius, The Second Life is coming to Burlington’s Performing Arts Centre Oct 21-31, 2015.

Now one would assume that this isn’t about Linden Lab’s Second Life, but it’s inevitable that due to the proximity of the subject matter, people will make that link.

This is exemplified in a review of the performance by Mary Askwith who writes :

One major downfall of The Second Life is how out of date the Internet references are: modem sounds, short form chat language, and even Second Life itself are all outdated and almost forgotten, making them irrelevant and distracting. For a play about the Internet, it’s too out of touch.

At this point we all glare at Mary Askwith and remind her that Second Life is still very much alive and is far from forgotten. However what this really tells us is that as virtual reality starts to hit the hype cycle, so do performances in other forms of media related to virtual reality. Books, film, television and of course theatre are all waiting to take advantage of something that is likely to be relevant.

There is however one more twist to this. Whereas the play doesn’t quite sound like it’s about Linden Lab’s Second Life, the address of the Tottering Biped Theatre does give one pause for thought. 540 Rosedale Crescent is quite fitting.