projects
Macbett
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For production images, please visit the project site.
The recent production of Eugene Ionesco's Macbett at the UCLA Department of Theater was the department's first performance to incorporate "interactive systems" that allowed lighting and sound to adapt automatically to performer position and movement. Macbett was produced in the process typical of large shows at UCLA. It was directed and designed by graduate students, advised by faculty, managed by department staff, with undergraduate students forming the cast and crew. Like other efforts at the HyperMedia Studio, it also involved the collaboration of students from computer science and electrical engineering, who helped to develop the technical systems concurrently with the production process.
In Macbett, we concentrated on the development of a toolset for defining relationships between performer action and media on stage, specifically the lighting and sound of the performance. The system worked in concert with the production's normal crew and was not designed to replace them, but instead to augment the designers' palettes with "adaptable" media components. A wireless performer tracking system was used to monitor a total of five performers and a few props used by the characters. We developed a set of software tools that allowed large-scale theatrical lighting and sound design to adapt to actor position and movement. Six computers communicating over an Ethernet network performed a variety of tasks, providing graphical interfaces, controlling lighting and sound, and "interpreting" position information to make inferences about how performers moved instead of just where they were.
Though a variety of performer-driven cues were created, the most interesting were those that did not just make complex sequences more responsive to performers, but actually showed promise of affecting the process of creating theater. For example, the primary agents of the supernatural in the play—the two witches, who also appear as Lady Macbett and her Lady-in-Waiting, were each to have their own control over the stage environment through their staffs. The first conjured thunder and lighting by raising the staff quickly in the air - the quicker and stronger the thrust, the more powerful the lightning strike. Meanwhile, the second witch could swirl her staff to create ripples of darkness, color shifts, and the sound of whirling wind proportional to the speed of her staff. These relationships were activated at the beginning of each scene where the witches appeared and lay "dormant" until the proper action was taken, allowing the actresses to conjure them up at any point. These cues required the performers to be aware of their new capabilities on stage and to work with the director to explore how they could be most effectively used.
Production Credits
Written by Eugene Ionesco
Translated from the French by Charles Marowitz and Donald Watson
Directed by Adam Shive
Scenic Design by Maiko Nezu
Costume Design by Ivan Marquez
Lighting Design by David Miller
Sound Design by David Beaudry
Interactive System Design by Jeff Burke
Dramaturg - Sergio Costola
Stage Manager - Michelle Magaldi
UCLA HyperMedia Studio
102 East Melnitz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095
310.794.5358 - info@hypermedia.ucla.edu
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