Staging Second Life in Real and Virtual Spaces - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 220

mixer which was in turn projected onto a screen
visible to the audience and actors (Figure 2). The
Summer Dancing performance was based on an
improvisation game used by Stan's Café Theatre
Company in the UK, Simple Math 4 , in which in
which five people changed the order in which
they sat on six chairs facing the audience. The
improvisation piece had no conscious narrative,
text or mime; the aim being to reveal the fractal
quality of theatre leaving the audience to develop
their own viewing strategies from the juxtaposition
of details presented in the performance.
In the Summer Dancing rendition of this piece,
three dancers performed in 'real space' and two
performed as avatars in Second Life . The dancers
introduced elements of the animations of the
avatars in Second Life into their live performance
and through improvisation copied the movements
from each other. The avatars in turn joined in with
the movement sequence until they were are doing
the full movement sequence in unison or in
canon. This conformity was then interrupted with
dancers and avatars deliberately getting out of
sync with each other and then, one by one, leav-
ing the stage.
The Staging Second Life project undertaken
at the University of South Australia (UniSA)
was designed to expose students to this form of
intermedial performance. As performers work-
ing with new technologies, students undertook
first-hand research into the relations between the
media of theatre and the virtual. Thus, students,
tutors and researchers as well as technical staff
were drawn together as a research community.
Such an approach is entirely consistent with
Boyer's (1990) notion of 'learning community'
in which students engage in critical reflection in
the company of scholars. In the context of theatre
studies, the stage became a laboratory as students,
teachers, performers and technicians undertook
research through the practice of performance and
reflecting on the experience.
The Staging of Second Life reflects this trend
in performance pedagogy where technology and

new ways of thinking about its applications are
increasingly integrated into the curriculum. The
staging played upon the liminal space between
real and digital. There was a genuine interplay
between performer and avatar resulting in a 'mu-
tual affect' between these different media. When
such mutual influence is achieved Kattenbelt
(2007) notes 'specific medium conventions are
broken through and new dimensions of percep-
tion and experience are explored' (2007, p. 6).
And as Chapple and Kattenbelt (2006) suggest,
it is within this liminal locus that a process of
'transformation' is taking place that gives rise to
'new dramaturgical strategies' in contemporary
performance (2006, pp. 11-12).
In the following sections we describe the
Staging of Second Life within a visual theatre
course at UniSA. First, the aims and objectives
of the course, the topics covered and assessment
approach are described. In the next section, the
Staging of Second Life activity undertaken within
the course is discussed and the details of the
implementation of the real and virtual performance
outlined. The third section presents the outcomes
from an evaluation undertaken at the conclusion
of the course. In the final section of this chapter,
the implications of the staging for theatre studies
within the undergraduate curriculum are explored.

eLeCTRONIC ARTS:
VISUAL THeATRe

Electronic Arts: Visual Theatre is a second-year
course conducted on a weekly 3-hour basis over
a 12 week period. The course offers students
the opportunity to create performance work that
integrates visual technologies. Compositional
principles are conveyed through the body and
technology and developed via improvisation and
team work. Reference to historical and new emerg-
ing technologies offer interesting and exciting
vantage points from which to explore the creation