Double Life a VR Musical

October, 2022

I discovered Leo & Hyde at The Festival of the Mind in Sheffield, and was intrigued by their experimental use of VR to enhance performance. I subsequently went to see their newest production Double Life in Huddersfield. I have seen a lot of VR/digital productions which utilise the technology in similar formats, most of which proved to be very passive, requiring the user to simply watch visuals that are prescribed to them. It was therefore really refreshing to experience a show where the audience had a level of interacting with the technology and allowed them to engage with it beyond a static video.

The show was split into sections in one half the audience were watching sections of the musical as you would typically expect. It was a intimate space with a small audience, I assume due to the availability of the number of headsets which limited the audience capacity. The original songs were lovely and performed expertly by Ben Raymond. The second half of the sections were in Virtual Reality, the audience were shown how to put on and use the VR headsets and then experienced a variety of different "games/applications" that were also being used by the character in the show.

The ability to enter the virtual space at the same time as the character was exciting and increased the audience empathy to their experiences, especially for those who had not experienced VR before. It was really great to see the technology being used in this way for productions and goes to show that the possibilities for VR, and VR within performance are truly only limited to the imagination of those creating it.

As with all VR/Digital shows that are being created at the moment their are certain limitations to the wider proliferation of use which were demonstrated well in Double Life. Audience members statistically will have been unlikely to have used VR technology before so there is an expected learning curve when giving them this technology for he first time. The cost of developing and securing the relevant software/hardware is expensive and so there is a certain balance to be struck between the usage and cost benefit.

Overall I'm very excited to follow Leo & Hyde's shows as they continue to create interesting VR/Digital theatre.