Framing hybrid futures in the Anthropocene

Abstract

suggests a (theoretical) reconceptualisation of locality in relation to performance. Her focus lies on social VR, a form of virtual reality in which geographically dispersed audience members and performers interact with each other in a virtual 360° environment – physically and vocally in real time – as avatars using VR goggles. In her analysis of Finding Pandora X by Double Eye Studio Hunter demonstrates how the dominant understanding of theatre as ‘ axiomatically local ’ , that is of a geographical boundedness of theatre including architectural, social and economic implications, is both expanded and contracted in social VR environments. Finding Pandora X simultaneously de-localises audiences and performers corporeal bodies and hyper-localises the individual theatre experience to a limited space of a few square metres marked out in the private homes of the participants. E.B. Hunter recon fi gures the place of theatre and, with it, reconceives what we might mean by a theatrical community. The participants of social VR experience community as fundamentally hybrid, engaging with an increased sense of communitas in an immersively shared narrative environment on the one hand, while retaining a sense of separation due to the geographical distance amongst themselves on the other hand. Co-present spaces turn into hybrid relationalities.