By projecting a life-sized virtual setting onto a rear projection screen spanning the entire stage, I sought to demonstrate to a director exactly how a proposed setting would look. Although the idea worked quite well in principle, the method was too cumbersome to be of practical use, especially when compared to the relative ease of using a HMD for the same purpose. Successful theatre productions have already been produced using computer graphics as scenic elements. We have seen recent productions in which VR was central to the plot, even if it had to be simulated on stage through more traditional scenic devices. The attraction for playwrights is obvious.
Virtual reality contains many elements present also in live performance.
In fact, those common constituents are the very things that define them and keep them distinct from related fields. Live actors and live audiences share a span of time and a block of space in order to participate in a common, immediately generated, experience. Similarly, VR, unlike a pre-recorded computer animation, is generated in the moment it is experienced. Like theatrical performance, it exists only during that time in which human participants encounter its wondrous contents. In large part it is because of its interactive nature that each experience in the theatre or VR is unique.