title: Tele-immersion for the training and performance of live theatre
Creators: name: Branch, Boyd Mathoni
Publisher: name: University of Kent
Year: 2025

description: This thesis presents the findings of a practice-based research project investigating how virtually co-locating remote users inside shared virtual environments affects creativity, collaboration, and social attunement. The main contributions of this thesis are novel findings on the impact of tele-immersion on the rehearsal and performance of improvisational theatre, and the development of Virtual Director, a digital platform for co-locating remote performers into shared virtual three-dimensional environments that can be accessed simply with a consumer level laptop. A case study of Virtual Director in professional use is first presented, followed by two qualitative and mixed method studies are presented that are the first of their kind for evaluating the impact of tele-immersion on the rehearsal and performance of remote improvisational and scripted theatre on performers, as well as the design, development, and employment of the Virtual Director platform. First, I present a background establishing the unique demands of live performance, improvisation, and collaborative storytelling and how they are affected by traditional video conferencing tools. Then I review existing telepresence and tele-immersive technologies that have been used for remote performances. This introductory chapter draws from recent studies in psychology, social science, neural biology and creative performance to support a theory for how a mirror-based tele-immersive virtual performance space can foster a unique sense of presence that supports entering into optimal flow states and positively impact an improvisor's ability to spontaneously generate cohesive and highly context-specific narratives with other performers. I then present Virtual Director, an original digital performance platform designed to facilitate an immediate sense of presence between performers by visually immersing them in a shared mirror-based tele-immersive virtual environment. I further explicate a theory for how tele-immersion can exploit the phenomenon of top-down neural processing of visual fields that makes it easier for collaborators to ignore distractions from their physical environments. A case study, published with the International Conference on Creative Computing, is presented that examines the use of Virtual Director for a series of performances with the improv theatre troupe Improbotics. The case study provides reports on audience and performer perspectives on the use of tele-immersion for entertainment, and examines in depth many of the considerations that must be accounted for when performing with a new technology and medium. Two qualitative studies are then presented that were designed to examine the impact of tele-immersion specifically on improvisational performance with domain experts. Review of survey data, interviews, and qualitative and quantitative analysis of audio-visual recordings of participants engaging tele-immersively are examined to demonstrate how the sense of presence, flow, creativity, social attunement, improvisational style, and skills are impacted. The first case study evaluates 6 different improvisational theatre 'duos' rehearsing and performing with Virtual Director over a 4-week period. The second study is then presented on randomly assigned remote partners given a creative storytelling task to perform both within a tele-present environment and traditional video conferencing environments. Novel findings of the case studies indicate that tele-immersion significantly leads to increased physical movement during remote rehearsal and performance, heightened awareness and engagement with the present moment and given circumstances of a scene, incorporation of virtual scenery into performance, and sense of physical presence with remote partners. The case studies work together to demonstrate how shared screen space fur- ther facilitates novel interactions that can be guided by a facilitator to help performers reach states of flow and co-creativity. Analysis of surveys and interviews are further used to demonstrate a correlation between a high sense of presence and social flow with a shift from pessimistic to optimistic anticipation about the use of technology for creative performance. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the reflections of performers and audience members regarding their emotional reactions to being virtually co-located after significant periods of being in social isolation. The discussion continues by exploring the potential of using Virtual Director and applying the findings on presence, flow, and creativity in online leadership training, therapy, and conflict resolution. My work presents original insights in understanding how traditional computing display environments can be utilised to enhance co-creatively a sense of physical presence between remote partners, and how presenting virtual bodies in co-located space can provide sufficient aesthetic feedback for performers to restore the physical aspect of social flow for improvisation that is otherwise lost with existing telepresence technologies.