PXR2020: Re-Seeing the Possibilities of Theatre in Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality

What new insights and opportunities does virtual reality (VR) offer to theatre and performance? In turn, what potential might theatre offer to VR creators? This potentially fruitful cross-pollination was precisely what prompted host organizations Single Thread Theatre Company and Electric Company Theatre to program the inaugural Performance and XR Symposium in October 2020, a conference designed to foster and explore the relationship between theatre and XR (a catch-all term for media created with virtual, augmented, and mixed reality). The experience of the conference was one of re-seeing the possibilities of performance in a new media form: discussions around access, spectatorship, and ethics—topics familiar to and well trodden by theatre artists and scholars—were reinvigorated in the context of virtual reality.