I would like to use this thesis post to review the progress I have made in the last weeks and lay out a roadmap for the final weeks of the project…

Break and First Week Back

Much of the development for the project occurred in preparation for the spring show, where I adapted the first performance with many of the notes from the semester. The first performance, story wise, feels like its in a pretty good place. The work for that one now has to do with adapting it for in-person and to make it a full audio experience.

Over the break, the opportunity came up to present the first performance from my thesis with some people from 5th Wall Forum in late July in Mozilla Hubs. I will have to some development over the semester to meet the July 1st technical deadline, which may take some time away from the in-person development. However, this is an opportunity I definitely want to pursue, so I am going to give it some time this month.

This first week back, I was swamped with another project that finished its playtest yesterday, so now I am clear to focus on thesis! I did find some time to plan out the intro and outro for the combined performance.

Plans Moving Forward

From the KPI exercise, I identified this categories to evaluate myself on: the acting, the tech, the integration, the concept, sharing, and documentation. For the acting, fulfilled looks like having crafted the physical storytelling moment to moment and knowing exactly what I am doing in those moments during the performance. For the tech, fulfilled looks like developing practical effects that support the story and add immersivity to the experience. For the integration, fulfilled looks like having the performance be sharp with its cues and having everything flow. For the concept, fulfilled looks like having a developed world that provokes questions in the audience that I have not encountered yet. For sharing, fulfilled looks like having an in person audience + a remote audience with a few guests, with the remote stream not feeling like a complete consolation to the actual thing. For documentation, fulfilled looks like having something that I will be proud to have in my portfolio and for the documentation to be able to show of the experience without needing too much additional explanation.

For the final form of this project, I would like to mash the three performances into one 20-30 minute performance to take place in-person for whoever can be on the floor. I am changing the framing/concept a little bit for the story to be about an Amazon Care influencer/evangelist who is live streaming their daily routine as a way to get a free health care. I think this framing will allow me to get to the point with the exposition of the story and launch into the 3 acts.