Interior photo of the Royal Shakespeare Theatre auditorium, taken with actors and audience at Builder’s Opening Night. Photo credit: Peter Cook © The RSC.

The Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA) at the University of Bath and The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (Central), University of London have been selected to work with the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) on a pioneering research and development challenge.

Commencing in January 2025, the project teams will work with the RSC to explore the creative possibilities of virtual production (VP) technologies in live theatre performance.

CAMERA will work with RSC creatives, performers and production specialists to explore artist-centred workflows for the next generation of performance capture, combining high resolution motion tracking and machine learning solutions.

Central will partner with Agile Lens, Preevue and Threshold Acoustics to work collaboratively with creatives, performers and technical teams from the RSC and other theatre organisations to build and test an advanced prototype for a virtual rehearsal room.

Run by XR Network+ at the University of York, the challenge will contribute to ongoing R&D at the RSC to bring the power of live performance to different audiences and communities across the world.

Speaking of CAMERA’s involvement in the project, CAMERA Director and Professor of Visual Computing and Machine Learning at the University, Neill Campbell said:

“CAMERA are excited to work with the world-class technology and creative teams at the Royal Shakespeare Company to develop the next generation of creative driven and performer-centric motion capture for live and immersive productions,”

“Our goal is to provide tooling that breaks down traditional technical barriers and puts artists and creative teams at the heart of developing bespoke solutions that capture a new level of detail and subtlety for a range of environments and productions.”