THE DEPARTMENT OF BADASSERY
The Department made history by debuting the new hit play
"Don't Be Evil" for VR and for a live audience
On September 10, 2015, the Department of Badassery teamed up with CloserVR, an award-winning Virtual Reality production studio, to capture the world premiere of the new play, Don't Be Evil, for Virtual Reality content before an invited live audience at San Francisco's hottest performance venue, PianoFight. It is the first time a new play has debuted both live in a theater and in Virtual Reality concurrently. CloserVR's camera rig captured the event in 360 degrees, including the audience in attendance, for an immersive 3-dimensional experience that is as close to being at the theater as it's possible to get.
How to View:
Click here for instructions on how to view via Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, or on your Android or iOS phone using Google Cardboard.
Click the links below to download the VR experience.
But... Why???
The Department of Badassery is on a mission to combine live theater with technologies like VR . VR is still developing a language as a storytelling medium. We believe that the storytelling techniques that have been honed by theater makers for thousands of years will have a role to play, and we'd like to take part in that conversation.
VR opens theater artists up to the world in a way we've never had before. The live experience of a play is hard to capture and share beyond the 4 walls of a theater space. But with VR, the audience is brought into the room. It will be impossible not to connect to the material on a deeper level.
VR also may eventually solve the scale problem that theater has always had. A theater has a limited number of seats, and a play is performed in one city at a time. But with virtual reality, an unlimited number of people from across the globe could experience an immersive story together. We could connect artists and audiences across the globe and lose nothing of the immediacy of the live experience that makes theater such a unique and vital art form.