Category: theatre

  • The Aluminum Cat Documentary Released Now!

    When you make an interactive show, it’s hard for the audience to tell just *how* interactive it is. This is part of the rare magic of any participatory theatre; even Keith Johnstone said don’t bother trying to convince your audience that a show is improvised, because they’ll never believe you. So we at Escape Character…

  • Telepresence Immersive Theatre with Mice instead of Voice

    Telepresence Immersive Theatre with Mice instead of Voice

    This past year at Escape Character has been quiet, but very busy. Me + several collaborators have been iterating on telepresence interactive theatre. We have written and debuted three scenarios and are in the middle of writing our fourth. We’ve put on in-person shows in San Francisco, Toronto and London. We just started remote invite-only…

  • Wonderful Projects I Did With Microsoft’s Kinect

    RIP the Kinect. Literally changed the direction of my research/career/life/art. Gave it more DEPTH. — Dustin FreemanšŸšLAX (@dustinfreeman) October 25, 2017 Microsoft has ceased manufacturing the Kinect. Here’s some projects, art and research, academic and industrial, that I could only have done with the Kinect. The Role of Physical Controllers in Motion Video Gaming, 2011:…

  • Immersive Theatre Roundup: D&D Yoga

    Yesterday, I saw/experienced the show “D&D Yoga”, in the Toronto Fringe Festival. This is a literal combination these two things, which worked in some surprising ways, didn’t work in some surprising ways. It is a yoga class, run by a real-life yoga instructor Christine Desrochers, during which you go on an actual Dungeons and Dragons…

  • Studying Narratives in Small Spaces, Part 2: Boats

    At the Augmented & Virtual Reality roundtables at GDC 2015, there was consensus that moving a player through space made them uneasy. While in the future, Iā€™m sure weā€™ll discover interesting tricks to ease the transition, what if we arenā€™t worried about that, and instead an entire interactive narrative experience happens in a single space?…

  • Studying Narratives in Small Spaces, Part 1: Mysteries

    At the Augmented & Virtual Reality roundtables at GDC 2015, there was consensus that moving a player through space made them uneasy. While in the future, Iā€™m sure weā€™ll discover interesting tricks to ease the transition, what if we arenā€™t worried about that, and instead an entire interactive narrative experience happens in a single space?…

  • Appears to Take on Meaning…

    Iā€™m in the midst of writing up my thesis, an unnaturally large document that I both want to just finish, but also have the urge to encapsulate every thought Iā€™ve had in my life to this date. Some of my spare thoughts that donā€™t appear in that formal academic document will appear here. Humans are…

  • Improv Remix Dailies

    Inspired by The Wooster Group, we’re going to start making dailies for each day* leading up to the showcase. Below are the first two! Check Twitter or my YouTube channel for more as they come out. * Not absolutely every day.

  • Players are Jerks to NPCs in Real Life, Too

    A non-player character (NPC) is anyone you encounter in a game who is not a player themselves. They are controlled by the game, whether a human game/dungeon master or a computer simulation. Player characters (PCs), the in-game characters controlled by the players, are notoriously abusive to NPCs. Since the universe exists and moves forward for…

  • Drunk Theatre Review: The Way Through the Woods

    Last night, I saw The Way Through the Woods at ADC Theatre in Cambridge, an original production by The Story Tellers. It wasn’t very good. I thought of writing a review, but I am kind of lazy, so I will instead present my extensive scribbled notes, which I think are more honest and funny. The…