An Ark showed me augmented realitys true artistic potential

A few weeks ago, I locked eyes with Sir Ian McKellen as he told me a story about how I was born, where I grew up, and when I would eventually die. Some of the details were a little off, but others were so unsettlingly on the money that it felt like he really did know things about my life that I’d never really shared with anyone. He told me not to panic, which was hard because of how piercing and arresting the entire experience was.

McKellen’s words made me look away only to find Golda Rosheuvel staring back at me just as intently and telling the same captivating tale I wanted to hear more of. Her telling of the story was different and brought new emotions into sharp focus, but it felt like it was coming from the same well of deep wisdom. And while there were moments when Arinzé Kene and Rosie Sheehy took the narrative to painful, dark places, making direct eye contact with them helped me understand that they were only trying to convey some important truths about themselves.

This is some of what I felt during a recent showing of An Ark, a new play from writer Simon Stephens, director Sarah Frankcom, and mixed reality production specialist Todd Eckert that’s currently running at The Shed in New York City. Produced by Eckert’s Tin Drum Theatre Company, An Ark uses augmented reality glasses to create a mixed reality experience that brings you face to face with the play’s actors. The play builds on Tin Drum’s previous experimental productions like The Life — a mixed reality show in which performance artist Marina Abramović paces around while disappearing — and Medusa, an installation that used Magic Leap 2 headsets to display digital architecture in an empty art space. But the new work deploys its technology in a novel way that makes it feel like you are more than an audience member.

I and a few dozen other people in attendance weren’t exactly sure what to expect before the performance began, but it started to make sense as we sat down in a circle in a dark, red room lit only by the dim glow of a massive orb suspended above us. After we all slipped on pairs of wired mixed reality glasses with the help of theater attendants, the room went even darker — so much so that we could barely see each other. The darkness and nervous silence made us all look forward toward the globe, which put our heads in the perfect position to see An Ark’s ethereal cast members step into focus one by one.

McKellen, Rosheuvel, Kene, and Sheehy play a quartet of people who have found themselves existing in a kind of transitional space somewhere between life and whatever comes after death. You, the audience member, complete their circle as a newcomer who doesn’t know anything about this metaphysical place, and you need to understand how your life story is a collection of experiences that aren’t all that unique to you. The characters are telling “your” story by recounting moments from their own lives, which become more specific and intense as the play unfolds.

Though the cast members aren’t physically present during the performance, An Ark’s sparse production / lighting design and its use of MR by way of AR headsets makes it feel like they’re all sitting just feet away. Frankcom — who has been open about not being especially interested in technology — directed An Ark as a traditional theater show that puts more emphasis on its actors’ performances as opposed to elaborate sets. But by capturing those performances with a volumetric video system consisting of 52 cameras, she is able to present them in a way that makes An Ark feel strangely haunting and like a prime example of how this kind of technology can create new ways of experiencing traditional theater.

As captivating as each of An Ark’s performances are, what really sells the play’s otherworldly elements is the way the MR glasses depict each actor — who recorded the entire show as a group in a single take. The actors appear close enough and clearly enough that it seems like you could reach out and touch them. But in certain moments, that clarity gives way to a bit of visual warping and wiggliness that’s caused by the glasses. It doesn’t quite break the illusion of the actors being in the room with you, but it gives them an uncanny, ghost-like quality that plays into the show’s exploration of death.

An Ark’s greatest feat is an emotional one that takes form toward the end of its 47-minute runtime. After recounting the arcs of their own lives, the play’s characters left me thinking about how much of myself I saw in them, and how the things that didn’t resonate with me personally might speak to the other audience members sitting around me.

As we all padded out to collect our shoes (you have to take your shoes off), I heard other people talking about how An Ark made them feel like they had become connected to something larger than themselves — not in a religious sense, but in terms of having shared a very intimate experience with a group that left us all thinking about how similar we are. I rarely find myself moved when I’m trying out new tech for the first time, but An Ark showed me just how powerfully AR can enhance art that’s already beautiful.

An Ark is now showing at The Shed through March 1st.