Thrust stage and acting troupe

I'm planning on building a thrust stage in the southeast of Ritch. This can be used for teaching, theatre and other events. I'd also like to establish an acting troupe, or several . If anyone has any questions, suggestions (donations wink, wink) please contact me and we can make arrangements. I would love to see how much acting and creative flair the SL community is willing to lend to my little endevour.

I would certainly be interested in the acting troupe. I've done sparce improv IRL, so this might be fun.

I have created the group. It's called Thespians. If anyone wishes to join, admission is open and free. When the group has enough members we will schedule a meeting for orientation, general guidelines/expectations, scoping out potential plots to either build a small/medium/large theatre or rent the use of a preexisting one, etc. Directors, script writers and budding stars I know you'r out there. Let me know if you are interested.

I would LOVE to try and do some lighting effects for you guys. I'm a theatre major in college for Lighting design, and if i get some time, i may be able to cook up some cool lighting effects for you.

Cool, thanks for showing some interest. Oh, and you too Darwin, can't forget you. If we are going to use a theatre there are a couple sitting vacant in a few sims. What I'm really looking for though is an enclosed theater. Don't get me wrong, doing a production "in the round" would be fascinating but for most people it would seem too foreign. If my group is going to build a theater, even small donations or even a nominal entry fee would help. Keep the ideas and support flowing everyone!

Osemab, that's a spiffy idea. In fact, I've built three theatres since I started here

Okay, I took down the first two, which were basic proscenium stages. My current one is an outdoor theatre on the Natoma/Minna border (Minna 243, 189).

I too have a shady theatrical past, and would love to help build another theatre. I'd be interested to see how you plan to stage a performance. Having your actors type their lines is definitely in the arena of the surreal.

Brad, I played with lighting for a bit in my first theatres. Lighting in SL doesn't behave as it does in real life... there's no focus or directed light. No shadows. And if someone builds a casino right next to you, you can forget about the whole thing

Anyone want to build a replica of the Globe?

Building a replica of the Globe would be awesome but would require a large plot of land. I was thinking that there might (not totally sure) be a way for a script to call out the lines that the actor feeds to it (script refering to Parts and lines). It might be hard or near impossible but it's something for scripters to consider. The only things slowing this process down are the resources (of which I'm sure there are some with plenty of them.) There is a sizable empty plot of land in Zoe in which a theatre might be built. It has a great view of the water. Just a thought.

From Dimensions of the Globe Theatre...



With a 100ft diameter, that's just over 30 meters. That's not too big to buy. I have a bit of cash (if they sort out the tax bug), and I had to abandon my last project. If you'd like to focus on your stage, I might just go ahead and build the Globe.

Wonderful! The location in Zoe that I found is (165, 25). Come down and see if we have enough room. I have about 4K Linden $ to expend on this project if you need some extra money. Any builders who wish to help in this project would be greatly appreciated.

Can I suggest taking this project slowly? Let's not buy any land until we're sure it's the right size and the right location. On reflection, that 100ft measurement might be the interior of the "O". I'm not sure.

Also, we should wait for this tax bug to be rectified. Buying land now, will probably put the buyer in the red due to taxes.

True. I was kinda jumping the gun there. I agree that we should wait until we know the exact proportions of the theatre and all the technical stuff about taxes. I'll look around for blueprints (good luck) and wait to see about the tax bugs. I'll also ask around in world to see if anyone is interested.

Osemab,

I am very interested in your project as a whole as well as the many bits and pieces, so I would like to talk to you more in depth. I will try to contact you in SL. Just FYI.

Hey guys, I have a play, and I was looking for actors and general people to help me out a while ago, though I had little success. I have insane amounts of land in blue, should you care to move there I can support the land for you partially or even totally.

BTW I am also a fairly decent builder and scripter if you need any help! And I've done my share of acting too, plays, even TV shows
Though it was mostly when I was a kid :|

Eggy, it would be great to have your help. We should all meet on the weekend.

VERY cool idea! I'm logging in now, despite the crappy resolution on my work computer, to join the group!

Can I be the very tempramental diva who wants to play parts she's really too old for and drinks during the day?

Bhodi "Sara Bernhardt" Silverman and her Agent, Lefty

Sounds good to me. What's the male version of a diva? A divo?

Are we not men? We are divo.

Thanks everyone for your input. Eggy that would be awesome. I was planning on announcing this on the weekend but, hey, what the heck. I am hosting an event on Monday. 11:00 A.M. PST concerning Improv and Acting Lessons for those who may be rusty or not know how. There will be prize money awarded for the best improvs. Anyone can also join the Thespian group then or before hand. I look forward to more interest and support in this idea!

LOL.

Actually, I think the male version of Diva is Jack Nicholson. And sure, you can be him. You don't get to drink during the day, but you do get to sleep with inappropriately young women!

That sounds interesting

Here is the spot for the construction of The Globe. I may be expanding the plot a little for the theatre to fit. If so, getting that nice spot directly by the water is not far in sight. Not shown in the attached pic is the table with various souveniers concerning The Globe and SL Thespians. By the way, if anyone has a script to vend a shirt from an object I would greatly appreciate it's donation. Another thing, the format of my event of Monday will be similar to the show "Who's Line is it Anyway?" thus I might need some help building whacky and amusing props for the improvs. Thanks everyone so far for the help and enthusiasm.

I think building the globe is an awesome idea.

But as for teh acting.. I really think that we should script bots. So that at any point, people can walk into the globe, press a big red button, then macbeth begins to play.

How cool would that be. Automaton actors.

I really think it could be a cool project like that.

The art comes in blocking and scene design and scripting it all. Perhaps design an "engine" that can read through a note that has the script and a basic stage direction language so that the bots know how to act.

What do you all think?

Good luck! LOL!
You dont know what you're getting into, and I dont know how to explain this without showing you some pictures or prims, but you should keep in mind that rotations on linked objects are limited to rotating one prim at a time and all rotations in SL can ony rotate an object around its center.
Ok picture this as an arm with an elbow "." and a hand "o" -.-o
If you want to rotate part of the arm everything else will stay in place see: -.-o -./o -.|o -.\o -.-o
You would have to recalculate the position for every piece when moving something as simple as a 4-prim arm model.
Plus the graphics would suck compared to avs

Hampton, I was thinking more along the lines of backstage scripting, like lifts and things like that. Bot actors would be too obvious. Besides it's hard enough making clothing for the avatars. Think about clothing bots, ouch! Very complicated. If you are interested in what I said, then we can talk.

I guess I didn't mean this as an attempt to create what you could do with human actors. I knew that was impossible. And thank you Eggy for that tip about prim rotation. I had assumed that there were no bones to be used with objects, since that would tkae a lot of processing.

Anyhow, here is more what I was thinking. And bear in mind that this might be what the globe does off of live performances.

I see it as "Abstract Bot Acting". And let me emphasize abstract.

I was thinking that the actors would be upside down cones with balls for heads. Having the words print out in the air above them inside of the chat channel. Sort of like speech bubbles in comics. Most of the interest would come from the scenery and the words. Definately not in the acting via gestures, or working legs, or heck, even faces.

Sort of a Bot Ballet/Acting. A very minimalist and representational acting program.

You see, then its very simple to add many scripts that the players can do. You just have to reformat the script, add in some (probably) XML tags that indicate the characters and the event chronology. Have a few pre-programmed actions... "lay", "sit", "die" (same as lay), "cry", "laugh", "hit" (simple head butt).

Maybe i am going off the deepend here, but I think this would make a really great piece of art as far as what does it mean to "act". I would have to believe that this would be the first automated acting troup. We just import new scripts and let them play it (with modifications, of course).

What do you think eggy? Way too much?

If it works, I think it might be a very groundbreaking thing. I don't know of anything that automates the acting process.

Thoughts?

-H.

PS: I would love to help out with other things too!