LIVE NOW FESTIVAL 2023: Building a musical theatre world in Gather.Town – a workshop with leo&hyde
Zoom workshop
Gather is a video chat platform designed to make virtual interactions more human. With integrated creation tools, users can build their own custom, interactable spaces where people can work, socialise, and learn.
In this online workshop, Leo Mercer – Artistic Director, leo&hyde will talk more about their experiences of using Gather to create a new immersive digital musical world, and share insight and practical tips on how to explore and use this funky platform for digital theatre.
Watch the trailer for leo&hyde’s latest immersive digital musical created and experienced on Gather: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/792232495
Find out more about Gather: https://www.gather.town/
ABOUT OUR SPEAKERS
Leo Mercer, leo&hyde
Leo is a Mancunian writer and creative producer. After studying at the Universities of Manchester and Oxford, he founded music theatre company, leo&hyde. Leo works with composers and music producers to make drama out of current popular music, telling stories exploring post-internet life and the emotional and cultural impacts of new technology.
leo&hyde is a Manchester-based music theatre company, combining new sounds and new stories with new tech in pursuit of a new style of 21st century musical. Musicals to date include The Marriage of Kim K (Lowry Rewrites 2019) and GUY. The company create performances with technology at the heart:
· They tell stories about people living with technology.
· They integrate new tech into our stage shows.
· They create work directly for cutting edge new media.
So far, the company have created digital work using virtual reality, live motion capture, graphic animation, multi-media live-stream, and of course the infamous ‘lockdown’ style community video. They are currently exploring creating work integrating drones, augmented reality, AI / machine learning, gaming platforms, and much more.
https://www.leoandhyde.com/
Adam Lenson
Adam is a London based Director, Dramaturg and Creative Technologist.
A major focus of his work is the development of new musicals. Shows developed to world premiere production include PUBLIC DOMAIN (Southwark Playhouse and Vaudeville Theatre), THE FABULIST FOX SISTER (Southwark Playhouse), STAGES (VAULT Festival), SHIFT+ALT+RIGHT (Online). WASTED (Southwark Playhouse), SUPERHERO (Southwark Playhouse), THE SORROWS OF SATAN (Brocket Hall & Tristan Bates Theatre), LOCK AND KEY (Vault Festival), THE LEFTOVERS (National Tour).
adamlenson.com
ABOUT THE LIVE NOW COMMISSIONS
2461 – a LIVE NOW seed commission, developed as a collaboration between leo&hyde and Adam Lenson Productions
We’ve been exploring the idea of a “digital immersive musical”, where game design is set design, and Snapchat filters are costume design. To do this, we’ve been exploring the platform gather.town as a space for digital theatre. gather.town is a fun digital platform, which combines Zoom-like video calls with a graphical interface a bit like Among Us / Habbohotel. Our theory is that gamification makes digital theatre more engaging than Zoom theatre, where it’s harder for audiences to feel the same absorption that they might inside an actual real-life theatre.
Adam’s been digging deep into the design and tech possibilities of the platform, designing a spaceship modelled on The Lowry’s floorplans. Leo and Stephen have constructed a story set in the year 2461, and cooked up a soundworld for a set of characters trapped on a spaceship.