You Should Have Stayed Home

This project responds to the seismic disruption that the COVID-19 pandemic has presented for the live performing arts, requiring an immediate alternative means of production for artists and audiences to engage in ‘liveness’ safely and across different physical sites. Concurrent with this unprecedented need, virtual reality technology has created the capacity to recreate the basic conditions required to stage works virtually: multiple people can now have their bodies and voices represented in a shared 3D, designed virtual space from the safety of their homes. These developments have given rise to the central question that drives our research: What technological applications and best practices guide performance-makers in building visual displays and embodied experiences that meet the needs for live virtual co-presence? How can digital performance facilitate moments of community, public space intervention, and access for geographically dispersed participants—particularly at a time when air travel is a challenge and increasingly understood as a major contributor to climate change? We are exploring these questions through a VR staging of a piece of immersive political theatre, You Should Have Stayed Home (at Festival of Live Digital Art, 2022)—a re-telling of the events during the 2010 G20 Summit that assumes new meaning in relation to current public dialogues on police violence and reform. This case study, explored with our partner SpiderWebShow, aims to build increased access to live art in pandemic contexts and in remote and underserviced communities, enabling performance to cross geographic and cultural divides. Additional funding provided by SSHRC IDG (PI Michael Wheeler) and VISTA grant (Co-PIs Mary Bunch, Laura Levin, Michael Wheeler, Rob Allison).