Interview: Sarah Ellis of Royal Shakespeare Company Gets Technical with THE TEMPEST

The Royal Shakespeare Company has reimagined THE TEMPEST in one of the most unique ways possible. In collaboration with Intel and Imaginarium Studios, The Tempest is being brought to life with innovative technology.

BroadwayWorld recently sat down with Sarah Ellis, Head of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company, to chat about how the project came about and what it's like to bring this type of technology to the stage.

Check out the full interview below!

How did the Royal Shakespeare Company partner with Intel for this project?

Gregory Doran, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was inspired by the elaborate Masques that were staged in the 1600s which were considered the 'cutting edge' technology of that period. Doran wanted to see if there was the possibility to enhance the Masque that appears in The Tempest with today's modern techniques and knew Intel would be able to make his vision come to life with their groundbreaking technologies.

Did you always know The Tempest would be the production to celebrate Shakespeare's 400th? Or did The Tempest come about when you wanted to take this modern approach to the story?

The Tempest is one of Shakespeare's last plays. Shakespeare was an innovator, one of the first to use techniques like trap doors and special effects to wow his audiences and it made sense to pay homage to him with this remarkable play. We wanted to take it a step further transforming the theater stage into an immersive digital environment with the help of Intel and Imaginarium Studios to create a really unique viewer experience.

The motion capture is something extremely unique to be using in theater, can you walk us through the process of transforming the theater into this digital environment?

Performance over motion capture technology works by capturing the actor's movements and facial expressions to ensure that the actor's full performance is translated into the digital character. The character Ariel requires an enormous amount of data, in fact, the PC used to animate the avatar has 50M times more memory than the one that put man on the moon. The actor playing Ariel onstage wears a sensor-equipped suit performing Ariel's movements and the data describing the actor's movements is processed real-time by Intel processors and The Imaginarium Studios rendering, then fed through for projection live on stage where the digital avatar comes to life. Facial capture has an established history in the world of feature films. Think of Andy Serkis as Gollum, King Kong or Caesar; or Sigourney Weaver as a blue Navi in Avatar. It is also widely used in video games cinematics.

Continuing on the performance capture, the actors are definitely tackling something new. Can you speak to them having to motion capture their performance? How did it go?

Mark Quartley is playing the sprite Ariel and is the only actor wearing the sensor suit, so has had to rethink his performance, taking into account his every movement is captured. He has said it has been strange but also liberating.

Shakespeare was an innovator, now you are re-inventing The Tempest with essentially today's biggest innovation, how does it feel to integrate the past and the present in this way?

It's truly a rewarding feeling knowing that we are possibly doing what Shakespeare would have wanted, which is incorporating groundbreaking technologies to not only bring characters to life but wow 21st century audiences. We have the ability to marry art and technology and bring amazing results to life that were inspired by Shakespeare's original play.

What can audiences expect from this new, immersive experience?

This performance of The Tempest is something out of the ordinary, unlike any theater production RSC audiences have seen before in Shakespeare's home town. Viewers can expect a live theatre experience with some extra magic powered by technology behind the stage.

Sarah Ellis is an award winning producer currently working as Head of Digital Development for the Royal Shakespeare Company to explore new artistic initiatives and partnerships. In 2013 she was listed in the top 100 most influential people working in Gaming and Technology by The Hospital Club and Guardian Culture Professionals. In partnership with Google's Creative Lab, she recently produced Midsummer Night's Dreaming which won two Lovie Awards for Innovation and Experimentation. In 2012, she produced myShakespeare, an online artistic commissioning platform for the World Shakespeare Festival. In 2011, she was the producer of the RSC's new work Adelaide Road, which mixed live performance with an app and website map. As a theatre and spoken word producer, she has worked with the Old Vic Tunnels, Battersea Arts Centre, Birmingham REP, Contact, Freeword, Improbable, Southbank Centre, Soho Theatre, and Shunt. She has been Head of Creative Programmes at the Albany Theatre and Programme Manager for Apples & Snakes, England's leading performance poetry organisation. She is a regular speaker and commentator on digital arts practice.