Virtual Rehearsal Room
Overview
A grant-funded VR rehearsal tool for the Royal Shakespeare Company — allowing cast members rehearsing in London and Stratford-upon-Avon to work in real time with actors in New York and Los Angeles, inside a virtual recreation of the Swan Theatre.
About the Project
The Royal Shakespeare Company stars the most in-demand actors globally. Their actors might be rehearsing on two continents at once — and the cost and logistics of gathering the full company in one place before production dates are set is prohibitive. Funded by XR Network+, Agile Lens built a solution: a virtual Swan Theatre where remote performers appear as avatars while performers sharing a physical room see each other through mixed reality passthrough. In-headset actors can call up their scripts, see exactly where they should be standing at any given line, and hear locality-filtered microphones to join voices in the room with voices remotely without digital echoes. A separate laptop application gives directors, designers, and stage managers the ability to ingest full scripts, place blocking notes, and monitor all performer positions in real time — with all state persisted across sessions via a custom backend server.