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376
Chapter XXI
Theatre in Second Life® Holds
the VR Mirror up to Nature
Stephen A. Schrum
University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, USA
Abstract
As creative people inhabit virtual worlds, they bring their ideas for art and performance with them into
these brave new worlds. While at first glance, virtual performance may have the outward trappings
of theatre, some believe they don’t adhere to the basic traditional definition of theatre: the interaction
between an actor and an audience. Detractors suggest that physical presence is required for such an
interaction to take place. However, studies have shown that computer mediated communication (CMC)
can be as real as face-to-face communication, where emotional response is concerned. Armed with
this information, the author can examine how performance in a virtual world such as Second Life may
indeed be like “real” theatre, what the possibilities for future virtual performance are, and may require
that we redefine theatre for online performance venues.
It’s like a Hall of Mirrors, where you keep bumping into reflection after reflection of things that
aren’t there in the first place!
—Melissa Perreault, a resident of Second Life.
Are we avatars or people performing this particular dance?
—Meghamora Woodward, a resident of Second
Life.
Prologue
I dance in the middle of a floor that pulsates with
lights from below, and am flanked by a half dozen
other moving bodies: shirtless, tattooed men with
bulging musculature, and scantily-dressed women
perched atop impossibly high Frederick’s of Hollywood style shoes. All of us move in synch with
choreography copied from Pulp Fiction, dancing
to an electronic beat emanating from huge speakers at the front of the room. The floor then changes
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Theatre in Second Life® Holds the VR Mirror up to Nature
to display a rotating earth so that we seem to be
floating in space above it. Colored disco lights
flash around us, and suddenly a fog machine by
the floor begins pouring out a bluish smoke that
engulfs us, and momentarily obscures our view
of the surroundings.
We are immersed in the sights and sounds of
a disco. But there are no smells or touch sensations here. This is a dance club that exists only
as binary information and in our imaginations,
one of many in the online virtual world known
as Second Life.
Introduction: What is Second
Life?
Second Life® is, according to Second Life: The
Official Guide, “a 3D online virtual digital world
imagined, created and owned by its residents”
(Rymaszewski, et al., 2007, p. 4). Anyone (with
the required computing power) can access this
world using the Second Life client, available as
a free download from the website, secondlife.
com. The user creates an avatar, “an interactive
representation of a human figure in a games-based
three-dimensional interactive graphical environment” (de Freitas, 69), and then moves through
the virtual world. The user travels about, either by
walking, flying, or—in the case of more distant
locations—teleporting. One may tour shopping
areas, art galleries, or other “builds” designed
and created by Second Life residents.
At first glance, Second Life (SL) appears to be
mostly about shoes, shopping and sex. Almost everywhere one travels, there are shoes and clothing
available for sale. If so inclined, one can purchase
a parcel of land, and drop a pre-designed house
on the parcel. One can then furnish the house
completely, with everything from living room
sets, to detailed kitchens and bathrooms, to beds
that have hidden boxes of animations in order
to allow your avatar and another’s to engage in
simulated sex.
Upon further exploration, however, one finds
that the world offers much more. While a casual
player or observer may never leave that dance club,
the social networking possibilities are widespread.
Since there are people connecting from many
countries around the world, SL allows for global
connectivity. Providing a virtual location for a
variety of real world corporations and businesses
(such as IBM, Toyota and Coldwell Banker), SL
also provides educators with a venue for networking and collaborating with distant colleagues, or
for creating a virtual classroom. In-world (inside
Second Life) locations such as EduIsland and the
New Media Consortium (NMC) offer teaching
and learning resources for academics at all levels.
For a variety of fields, SL is a rich laboratory,
ripe with research topics. Psychologists (Suler,
2007) have analyzed behavior within Second
Life; computer scientists (Schweller, 2007) have
created virtual interactive objects for student use
and experimentation.
For creative artists, there are a variety of small
galleries to exhibit works created both in SL and
the real world (Real Life, or RL), and numerous
venues featuring live music and other, more
theatrical, performances. Recently, in increasing
ways, theatre practitioners have worked within
the SL environment. As performances occur in
SL, we learn more about how the virtual environment can or might work as a mirror of RL
theatre, and what the possibilities are for future
virtual performance. Another question arises:
how “real”—meaning how much like RL live
theatre—can these performances be?
Theatricality in Second Life
In an article entitled “Begin with A Single Step:
Adding Technology to a Course” (2000), I compared the use of email and electronic or computermediated communication to wearing a mask in
an acting class:
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