Ina Centaur Productions presents Hamlet

The Ina Centaur Production of Hamlet is a play—with real life actors performing via live voice—to be performed in the SL Globe Theatre, set in sLiterary’s Cookie Island on Second Life.

The goal of this project is to produce and present a professional performance via actors who might not be in the same place at the same time—allowing for actors from around the world to collaborate and perform simultaneously, with the hope of making the first step in eliminating the barrier of distance. Thus, will be Second Life's significance in real life theatre.

The production blog will be up shortly, and will serve as an info-heavy documentation source of the entire production. The play opens in February 2008. Actors: Please be prepared to read a passage of your choice of the character you wish to perform, a passage of my choice of the same character, and possibly, an unrelated scene of my choice.

Actors who make the cast will have custom photorealistic skins, shapes, eyes, made based on photos of their own real life body c/o SLface. Custom hair, clothing, and props will also be created for this production. (L$1,000,000+ in value.)

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The performance will be a period production of Hamlet, rather than a modern play, because we are, as Shakespeare had been in his days, really in the foundational stages of a new kind of theatre.

Furthermore, the Bard's works were written with an emphasis on dramatic voice, rather than extreme facial expressions and sets. This works even given the fact that Second Life cannot currently foster complex facial emotions, but can allow for both live voice and photorealistic recreations of the original actor's body and face.

However, motion capture technologies and such may enable future performances to allow for actor bodies to be synced with their SL components. We have to start somewhere; so, why not here?