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PlayLab

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PlayLab is an in-progress collaboration between Skövde Municipality, Culture, and University, facilitated by the Future Media Theaters Initiative. PlayLab is a new high tech performance & research space in Skövde, focused on experimentation at the intersection of games, game technologies and performance, as well as collaboration between researchers, professional artists, youth and community members, located on the top floor of the Kulturlabbet youth culture house in downtown Skövde. 

https://www.futuremediatheaters.com/playlab.html​

Future Media Theaters

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Future Media Theaters is an international initiative, currently funded by Region Västra Götaland (2021-2022) to work toward the development of a research centre. Led by faculty from University of Skövde (myself & Lars Kristensen) in close collaboration with Folkteatern Gothenburg and the Skövde Art Museum, Future Media Theaters brings together partners from industry, academia, and the cultural sector in Sweden, Europe, the UK and the US who are all working together to investigate and create new forms of performance using interactive technologies.

Visit the official project site at:
futuremediatheaters.weebly.com
​Our lab-based approach allows us to share our experimental work with the public, and supports our production of both creative performance works as well as scholarship. Our interdisciplinary focus cultivates both new performance works that expand the field of media theatre, as well as creative research in partnership with related fields, such as cognitive science, games, and human computer interaction.

The Future Media Theaters logo design references two prior eras of major technologically entangled change in theatre. The lightning bolt references electrification, and the central mechanical eye is a reference to the "kino eye" and the inclusion of cinema on stage. Today we are in the midst of another transformational era of technologically entangled change in theater, and this project is focused on critically reflecting on and driving this change in ways that advance, expand, and innovate future theatres for all. 

Over the course of the grant period, September 2021 - September 2022, a wide range of activities that bring together the public, arts professionals, and researchers from a range of related fields will take place in Skövde, Gothenburg, and online. Activities include two seminars with invited speakers, an AfterWork conversation series, two performances, and a series of Future Dreaming ideation sessions. Lessons learned from this first year of the initiative will be synthesized in a white paper, also made available to the public at the end of the grant period in the Fall of 2022. 

Land Mass / Barnacle / Colony / Bot

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Interactive media performance
May 22, 2019, The Karlskrona Marine Museum Karlskrona, Sweden

Director and Playwright: Rebecca Rouse
Producer: Lissa Holloway-Attaway
Composer and Dramaturg: Brendan Padgett
Sculpture and Costume Design: Jefferson Kielwagen
Cinematography: Marcos Serafim

This interactive immersive performance opened the "Changing Climates" exhibition at the Karlskrona Marine Museum. Designed to help raise awareness about the ecological threats facing the Baltic Sea, and about climate change at large, this site specific media performance brought participants through multiple gallery spaces to tell the history of the deep time of the Baltic, and imagine possible futures.

​The performance begins with a faux TED talk starring a fictitious celebrity academic, who is interrupted by Pangea, the uber supercontinent. Pangea brings along Baltica, a personification of the Baltic Sea, and together they lead the audience through a range of experiences - an interactive tarot card game that procedurally generates possible narratives of the future for the Baltic, an immersive film meditation in an underwater tunnel, a mixed media pop up book with future fairy tales for a post-climate change world, and to a final scene in the museum's majestic Figurehead Gallery with dancing barnacles and a large-scale inflatable sculpture representing the spirit of the Baltic, and emphasizing themes of resilience and hope. 


Go Deeper

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Immersive HD video installation, 5:30 minutes
Cinematography: Marcos Serfim
Screenplay: Rebecca Rouse
Narrator: Brendan Padgett

May 22 - June 2, 2019
Changing Climates exhibition
Karlskrona Marine Museum Karlskrona, Sweden

"I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Baltica, immersed in the deep time of water, history, and struggle; liquid past and future."
-Go Deeper, excerpt from audio narration
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Marcos Serafim's water glitch work represents the distortions of our gaze towards nature and the environment: an interaction often mediated by technology. This meditation can either be a path for discovery or fragment our human-nature interactions into a blurred, liquid image. Structuring this idealized nature, Rebecca Rouse's text, narrated by Brendan Padgett, plays with the form of the guided audio meditation, further troubling contemporary romanticism around the topics of empathy, media, and environmentalism. 


Sweeney Todd

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Stephen Sondheim's operatic tale of brutality and revenge, reimagined with facial projection mapping technology. Produced by the RPI Players, performances April 2019 at the RPI Playhouse, Troy NY. 

Director: Rebecca Rouse
Musical Director: Frank Leavitt
Choreographer: Zachary Pearson

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DIRECTOR’S NOTE

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979 - Tony Award for Best Musical) has long been a favorite of mine, and I have hoped for many years to have the opportunity to direct this piece. If the show is an old favorite of yours, I hope this RPI Players production will renew your love of Sweeney Todd, and if you are a newcomer to the show, welcome.
​

The dark themes of power and oppression, violence, and revenge in Sweeney Todd are timeless. The Dickensian-level inequality highlighted in the story, as well as the themes of hypocrisy, misogyny, and abuse of power remain particularly ripe for our current times. Brilliantly, composer and lyricist Stephen Sondheim and book writer Hugh Wheeler provide macabre, grotesque humor as respite from these dark themes, as well as the pleasures of Sondheim’s stunning score and clever wordplay.

Over the course of the past twenty years, I have developed a fascination with incorporating technologies on stage as performative collaborators with actors. This thread continues in our production of Sweeney Todd. In lieu of the common ‘buckets of blood’ approach to staging Sweeney Todd, we have focused instead on chilling, uncanny theatrical techniques old and new, including traditional mask-work and digital technologies. Developing Todd’s upstairs barber shop as an expressionist space representing Todd’s tortured psyche, scenic projections represent Todd’s nightmarish psychological interior.

In addition, we have incorporated responsive technology to capture the movements of Todd’s victims and allow them in real time to puppeteer a responsive 3D model projection of the Judge’s face. As Todd explains, until he can get his hands on Judge Turpin, he’ll “practice on less honorable throats,” essentially rehearsing his idealized revenge murder on others. Our production allows us to see the faces of these ‘faceless victims’ as Todd sees them, eerily transformed into Turpin’s likeness.

This responsive mask is echoed throughout the design with physical masks, created by Arts faculty member Jefferson Kielwagen’s Advanced Sculpture students. These masks, which appear in Poor Thing and City on Fire, were designed and fabricated by hand specially for our production, in collaboration with our production mask designer, Alex Sammataro. This emphasis on masks, both digital and physical, serves to highlight the prominent theme of hypocrisy in the show — every character wears a mask, literally or figuratively, hiding some part of themselves in a ruthless, cut-throat society.

This is a dark, relatable theme with deep resonance today. As the Ensemble suggests in the Epilogue, “No one can help; nothing can hide you / Isn’t that Sweeney there beside you?” But Sondheim leaves us with hope, not only in the plot of the story, but also in the magnificent workmanship and artistry of the show’s creation itself.

Care for a shave?


Peer Gynt: Orchestral Spectacular

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In collaboration with Choir and Orchestra Director Nicholas DeMaison, this new adaptation of Ibsen and Grieg's Peer Gynt reimagines the sprawling episodic adventure as a 90-minute theatrical spectacle for orchestra, chorus, and a small cast of performers.

Performed at the Rensselaer Holiday Concert in December 2017; presented in collaboration with EMPAC, the RPI Players, the Rensselaer  Student Union, The RPI School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, and the students of Prof. Jefferson Kielwagen's Advanced Sculpture class. 

Musical Direction + Adaptation: 
Nicholas DeMaison

Direction + Story Adaptation: 
Rebecca Rouse

Theatrical Design:
Jefferson Kielwagen
Cast
Narrator:
Zachariah Spurrier

Solveig and Anitra:
Kimberley Dolanski Osburn

​Puppeteers:
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Jackson Wong, Monica Hoh, Zachary Pearson, Mark Blum, Molly Kerwick, Rob Stewart



​Download a copy of the full program here:
peer_gynt_program.pdf
File Size: 464 kb
File Type: pdf
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The Nubian Word For Flowers

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Director, Libretto: IONE
Composer: Pauline Oliveros
Music Director: Nicholas DeMaison
Assistant Director and Dramaturge:
​Rebecca Rouse
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World Premiere Performance November 30, 2017 at Roulette, Brooklyn, New York


Experiments in Opera, International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), and Ministry of Maat celebrated the life and legacy of Pauline Oliveros with the world premiere of her opera collaboration with writer/director IONE, The Nubian Word For Flowers at Roulette in Brooklyn on November 30, 2017. Encompassing the Nubian Diaspora and the life of Lord Horatio Herbert Kitchener of Khartoum, the opera uses live performance, electronics and moving images to create a deep dream exploration of Nubian soul and Colonial Mind.

Performed by:
Michael Weyandt, bass baritone; Lisa E. Harris, soprano; Peter Tantsits, tenor; Alice Teyssier, soprano; Zizo, baritone and oud, flute, duff; IONE, text and vocals; James Austin Smith, oboe; Jennifer Curtis, violin; Nathan Davis, percussion; Jacob Greenberg, piano; Rebekah Heller, bassoon; Daniel Lippel, guitar; Monica Duncan, video design; Ross Karre, video design; Fray Eva, costume designer; Nicholas Houfek, lighting design; Senem Pirler, sound engineer

The Ministry of Maåt’s 2017 performance of The Nubian Word for Flowers; A Phantom Opera is a made possible by Map Fund. The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Our Town

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Our Town: a New Media Theatrical Experience presents a new media re-imagining of Thornton Wilder's American theater classic. Wilder’s play endures because it touches a core of the human condition: our inability to fully appreciate moments of our lives before they pass us by. Using new technologies, this production will reinvigorate this play for contemporary audiences by incorporating a responsive gesture-based interactive system for actors to control commissioned artworks projected on a large-scale 360-degree immersive screen environment, and a new directional audio score.

Production March 2017 at EMPAC at RPI, in collaboration with Prof. Marc Destefano, visual artist Clare Johnson, composer Brendan Padgett, the RPI Players, and Prof. Nick DeMaison's Rensselaer Choir.

*Received the highest level of TANYS Award for Outstanding Achievement for Production Concept (Rebecca Rouse, Marc Destefano, Clare Johnson, and Brendan Padgett), as well as an award for Excellence in Collaboration (RPI Players, EMPAC, Rensselaer Union, RPI School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Rensselaer Choir, and Seattle 4Culture).

Download the full program for Our Town here:
our_town_program.pdf
File Size: 1508 kb
File Type: pdf
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The Episodic Operator

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The Episodic Operator is an improvisatory music performance with scripted text elements, assistive music technologies, and robotics. Thematically the piece centers on memory, the body, and music. I served the project as a playwright by writing the scripted elements and helping to design an organizing structure for the performance. The script is a collection of found and solicited short monologues, edited for clarity and length. A monologue from the media performance theorist and artist Stelarc is intended for a robotic performer to speak, and this was performed by a small, child-like humanoid Zeno robot in our production. Two of the performers in the piece, Pauline Oliveros and Jonas Braasch, contributed original monologues, which they recorded. In addition, a Baxter manufacturing robot was mounted on an electric wheelchair, and programmed to move or dance in response to the music, which was improvised by a group of musicians including Jonas Braasch, Pauline Oliveros, and David Whalen, an artist and inventor who has developed assistive technology to enable musicians with limited mobility to improvise. The images are from a final rehearsal, and show the Zeno robot (left) delivering the Stelarc monologue, and Baxter robot (right) rehearsing with musicians.

Designers: Jonas Braasch, Ted Krueger, Pauline Oliveros, Rebecca Rouse, Mei Si, and David Whalen. 
Presented at the International Symposium on Adaptive Technology for Music and Art (ISATMA). Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy NY, July 2014.



after the quake

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Directed by Melissa Foulger
Dramaturgy by Rebecca Rouse
Adapted for the stage by Frank Galati, from the short stories by Haruki Murakami 

February 22 - March 2, DramaTech Theatre
Georgia Institute of Technology
May 24, ArtLine Mixing Realities Digital Performance Festival
Blekinge Technical Institute


Building on dramaturgical theory from Rouse's dissertation as well as work begun by students in LMC 2813: Design with Digital Media for Performance, this production of after the quake incorporates digital technologies in innovative ways that enhance the storytelling in the piece. 

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From left to right, Erik Arndt (Junpei), Justin Grey (Narrator/Frog), and Alex Pennington (Takatsuki/Katagiri) in DramaTech Theatre's production of after the quake, directed by Melissa Foulger.

Ascent

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Celebrating 20 Years of GVU Innovation with Interactive Art Installations

Fellow Digital Media PhD students Andy Quitmeyer, Mariam Asad, Paul Clifton, Tom Jenkins and I created a large-scale interactive art installation, "Ascent," for GVU20, a celebration of the GVU Center's 20th Anniversary, October 23-25, 2012. Check out the official project site here, and watch video of the project here.

Project Description:
A cluster of four large weather balloons were tethered to the roof of the Technology Square Research Building (TSRB). The balloon line was outfitted with a bundle of video cameras capturing live video footage of the city in 360-degree panorama. The balloon video stream was linked live to one elevator inside TSRB, and the height of this elevator determined the height of the camera bundle.

The interior of the Ascent elevator was lined with projection screen material. Four ultra short-throw projectors mounted in the ceiling of the elevator displayed live-feed panoramic video footage of the city, captured from the weather balloon cluster tethered on the roof of the building. Music created for Ascent by composer Brendan Padgett accompanied the experience.

Experience Design: Rebecca Rouse, Andrew Quitmeyer, Paul Clifton, Mariam Asad, Tom Jenkins

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Elevator passengers enjoy Ascent.

Pictures at an Exhibition

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Experimental Puppetry with Digital Technologies

A collaboration between undergraduate courses taught by Professors Michael Nitsche (DWIG), Ali Mazalek (SynLab) and Claudia Rebola (COA) resulted in a performance piece using digital puppetry. Pictures at an Exhibition was selected for performance at the Center for Puppetry Arts in Atlanta, GA in 2011 for their yearly experimental puppetry showcase, XPT.

Five hand-and-rod puppets told the story of a slapstick heist of a famous painting in a museum. Each puppet was equipped with motion and force sensors that allowed the puppets' movements to be mapped in real-time on a large projection screen, where they animated abstract shapes taken from Kandisky's White II, modeled as a 3D scene in Unity. More information is available at the project website.

Directors: Ali Mazalek, Michael Nitsche, Claudia Rebola
Technical Directors: Paul Clifton, Matthew Drake, Firaz Peer, Andy Wu
Performers: Brad Beglin, Michelle Bjornas, Mauree Culberson, Donovan Henneberg-Verity, Rebecca Rouse
Puppet Design: the students of LCC6318 and LCC4730



Ducks Feed People

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Performative Candy Dispenser for Piedmont Park

Created in the DWIG (Digital World Image Group) project studio and presented as a proof-of-concept project for Digital Media Demo Day in December 2010, Ducks Feed People playfully subverts the relationship between resident waterfowl and visitors to Atlanta's Piedmont Park. As ducks in the park's Clara Meer Lake scrabble for bread thrown by park visitors, a computer vision system activates an oversized duck head that dispenses Tootsie Roll candies for park visitors.

Watch a video of Ducks Feed People here.
This project was featured on Virgin Atlantic Flights' Boingboing channel May and June 2011.

Experience Design: Michael Nitsche, Andrew Quitmeyer, Rebecca Rouse, Thomas Lodato, Vignesh Swaminathan, Andrew Roberts, Matthew Drake


Showtime Vending

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A Performative Vending Machine

Created in the DWIG (Digital World Image Group) project studio and presented as a proof-of-concept project for Digital Media Demo Day in May 2010, Showtime Vending playfully converts the space around a soda can vending machine into a street performance venue for both co-located and virtual audiences. Spectators vote on performances, which are videoed and streamed online, and determine if the performer had earned a free can of soda. 

Experience Design: Michael Nitsche, Andrew Quitmeyer, Rebecca Rouse, Thomas Lodato, Vignesh Swaminathan, Andrew Roberts, Matthew Drake


The Media Experiment

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Guerrilla media installation and performance 

What is the nature of the museum institution in contemporary society? Is there a place for digital art and interactive experience in the museum of today? Special interest group, The McKnight Center for the Arts, donated two non-destructive works of experimental digital art to The High Museum in Atlanta, GA in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Reflections on these installations were presented in a performance at the Blue Tower Arts Gallery in 2010. 


Experience Design: The McKnight Center for the Arts


Club Verona

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Investigating audience opinions about liveness in theatrical performance

Designed to investigate theories about liveness written about by theorists such as Philip Auslander and Peggy Phelan, Club Verona re-imagines the fight scenes from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as breakdance battles. With Montagues played by members of Georgia Tech's Break Dance club, TekStyles, and Capulets played by SecondLife avatars, the performance was presented to an audience at the Digital Media Demo Day in May 2009.

Experience Design: Jenifer Vandagriff, Jay David Bolter, Melissa Foulger, Rebecca Rouse
Performers: TekStyles, MC Matta Fact, Oliver Jan


Harold and the Purple Crayon

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A music video adaptation of the classic picture book by Crockett Johnson, "Harold and the Purple Crayon." With original music, lyrics, vocals and stop motion animation by Brendan Padgett, Kirk Quinsland, and Rebecca Rouse.



Woyzeck

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Translated, Written and Directed by Rebecca Rouse
Adapted from Georg Buechner
Music by Brendan Padgett
Choreography by Kyle Shepard






Created as a Master's thesis project at York University's AR Lab, under the supervision of Professor Caitlin Fisher,  Woyzeck is an interactive, immersive, augmented reality adaptation of Georg Buechner's classic German play from the 1820s. The installation included not only a unique use of AR technology supported by Georgia Tech's DART system, but also an original English language translation and adaptation of Woyzeck, along with original music, lyrics, and choreography. 

Experience Design: Rebecca Rouse, Michelle Moon Lee
Music: Brendan Padgett
Choreography: Kyle Shepard

Woyzeck Masters Thesis.pdf
File Size: 991 kb
File Type: pdf
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Reviews of Woyzeck

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More information about Woyzeck is available in reviews  from The Toronto Star, Popmatters.com, as well as a York University PR article.

Toronto Star Review
File Size: 61 kb
File Type: pdf
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PopMatters.com Review
File Size: 73 kb
File Type: pdf
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York University PR article
File Size: 262 kb
File Type: pdf
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Video Documentation of Woyzeck

Linear edit of all media seen in head mounted display

The Making of Woyzeck

Documentary film by Kirk Quinsland about the process of making Woyzeck (2007)

The Magellan Project

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Written and Directed by Rebecca Rouse and Kyle Shepard
Music by Ben Kamber

Production Workshop
Brown University, Providence RI
2004


Machinal

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Directed by Rebecca Rouse
Written by Sophie Treadwell
Choreography by Kyle Shepard

Leeds Theatre
Brown University, Providence RI
2004

*Winner of the 2004 Weston Award for Directing


Vamps and Scamps

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Directed by Kathryne Jennings
Performed and Conceived by Rebecca Rouse
Accompanied by Eric Sedgwick

Grant Recital Hall
Brown University, Providence RI
2004


Transforming Jimmy Dalton

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Directed by Michael Perlman
Music by Brendan Padgett
Lyrics and Book by Rebecca Rouse

Brownbrokers 
Stuart Theatre
Brown University, Providence RI
2003



Fefu and Her Friends

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Directed by Rebecca Rouse 
Written by Maria Irene Fornes

Production Workshop
Brown University, Providence RI
2002