Kill the Wabbit

Troy Steel is an aspiring action movie hero who's been fired from a reality TV show. Annabella is a talented actress who's struggled to find onscreen work, getting cast only to perform behind the mask of computer-animated characters.

When Troy is hired to animate a heroic warrior using a motion-capture suit, he's unable to perform even the simplest scene without suffering a crisis of confidence. To save the show, the producer coerces Annabella to secretly redo Troy's animation after hours.

The couple's journey is guided by Troy's grandparents, famous vaudeville actors who return from the past. The play mixes real-time motion capture sequences with film and video game animation to examine how performers combine traditional skills and new technologies to connect with an audience.

In this open workshop, we rehearsed a few chosen scenes from the play. The scenes were selected to demonstrate  the integration of live action stage performance and live motion capture animation.

The motion capture hardware and software have been repurposed from Play the Knave, an augmented reality video game developed by Gina Bloom, Professor of English at UC Davis. By adapting an existing, economical, consumer grade motion capture system, we expect to demonstrate that integrating this technology into live performance is affordable for small theaters.

More about Play the Knave: