Theater

SXSW: GRAND THEFT HAMLET, OR ALL THE VIRTUAL WORLD’S A STAGE

Premiering at SXSW in Austin, Texas, Grand Theft Hamlet garnered acclaim from both critics and audiences alike. In this compelling segment from The Digital Room (2023), produced by Mark Ager, Sam Crane delves into the creation of this remarkable documentary.

In Grand Theft Hamlet (2024), filmmakers Sam Crane and Pinny Grylls chronicle an audacious project: the production of Shakespeare’s Hamlet within the virtual landscapes of Grand Theft Auto Online amid the isolation of the 2021 COVID-19 lockdowns. Crane, also known by his stage moniker Rustic Mascara and esteemed for his performances in London’s West End, embarks on an innovative journey into digital spaces, seeking new horizons for artistic expression. His pioneering venture was lauded with Critics’ Choice Award at the 2022 edition of the Milan Machinima Festival for his avant-garde short, We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On (2021), marking a significant milestone in fusing game technology with classical theater. This endeavor introduces a contemporary lens to the interpretation of Shakespearean works. Alongside Crane, Grylls, a renowned documentary filmmaker with a penchant for human-centered narratives, navigates the uncharted territories of a virtual milieu. Her extensive background in ethnographic video work is a testament to her versatility, illustrating the evolving demands on documentary filmmakers to adapt and innovate within digital landscapes, thereby expanding the scope of narrative storytelling.

This groundbreaking work not only pioneers new avenues of artistic expression but also sheds light on the profound social and cultural repercussions of the pandemic on the creative sectors, alongside the pivotal role of video games in nurturing social bonds. Prior to delving into the filmmakers’ inventive methodologies, the technical hurdles they faced, and the distinctive experiences of the directors, it’s crucial to underscore that Grand Theft Hamlet stands as a paragon within an emergent genre of documentaries. These documentaries leverage video games or virtual platforms as their central narrative canvas, treating digital worlds with the gravitas of real-world settings. This exploration delves into the rich social and creative potential of virtual realms, emphasizing how these platforms can be a crucible for connection, collaboration, and artistic expression. Examples of such game video essays include the award-winning Knit’s Island (shot in DayZ, 2023), We Met in VR Chat (shot in VR Chat, 2022), Total Refusal’s Hardly Working (shot in Red Dead Redemption 2, 2022), and others that we have previously discussed and/or presented either on VRAL or at the Milan Machinima Festival. Many of these documentaries intricately weave narratives around the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, illustrating how virtual environments emerged as sanctuaries of community and purpose amid widespread isolation. The pandemic, while presenting unparalleled challenges, also sparked a surge in creative and intermedia experimentation, bridging the gap between traditional and digital art forms. This renaissance is vividly captured through the filmmakers’ journey, exploring new frontiers, navigating technical complexities, and bringing to light the unique perspectives of its creators.

(continues)

Matteo Bittanti


Works Cited

Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls, Grand Theft Hamlet, documentary, 90’, 2024, United Kingdom. URL

Associate writer-director: Mark Oosterveen. 

Production: A Project 1961, Grasp the Nettle Films production, in association with Park Pictures.

Producers: Julia Ton, Rebecca Wolff. 

Executive producers: Sam Bisbee, Jackie Kellman Bisbee, Cody Ryder, Will Clarke, Andy Mayson, Mike Runagall, Sam Crane, Harlene Freezer, Eric Kuhn, Hannah Bush Bailey, Shanida Scotland.

Crew: Directors, writers: Sam Crane, Pinny Grylls. 

Camera: Pinny Grylls. Editor: Pinny Grylls.

Music: Jamie Perera.

Sam Crane, We Are Such Stuff As Dreams Are Made On, 10’, 2021, United Kingdom. URL

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ARTICLE: PERFORMING WITH/IN RED DEAD REDEMPTION

Elisa Sanchez, En mémoire de Dandelion, video, sound, 4’ 12”, 2021, France

Today is the last day to watch Elisa Sanchez' Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible on VRAL. To celebrate the conclusion of the exhibition, we look back at three artworks that appropriate and repurpose Red Dead Redemption.

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In the past few years, several artists have used Red Dead Redemption 2/Online to create remarkable, often unclassifiable works. Although Rockstar Games’ Wild West themed videogame is the common denominator, the artists’ approach, intent, and execution vary considerably. Let’s consider three examples: Marie Foulston’s The Grannies, Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus (Deep inside my desert heart), and Elisa Sanchez’ Au-delà du désert flou, plus aucune sauvegarde n’est possible.

Let’s start with The Grannies. A short documentary clocking at 17 minutes, the film was originally conceived as a two channel installation at Now Play This, a video game festival in London. It presents the experiences of a group of players calling themselves The Grannies as they discover a secret area of the game where “normal” (read: consistent with the designers’ original intentions) rules do not apply. The players use their avatar as a vessel to explore such bizarre and weird territory. Here the relationship between the player and the avatar is clear and unambiguous. The filmmaker’s emphasis is on the artificiality of the simulation and the unexpected materiality of ethereal game spaces. The Grannies is first and foremost a statement about the nature of video games made by expert players, i.e. Kalonica Quigley and Marigold Bartlett, Melbourne-based friends and game developers, along with friends and fellow game-makers Ian MacLarty and Andy Brophy. Formally speaking, the video maintains the split screen/dual screen format of the original installation, unlike the works by Güt and Sanchez, which follow a less hyper-mediated approach, thus resulting in a more immediate and “transparent” viewing experience.

Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus introduces an extra level of performativity. Based on an existing screenplay, it features a group of player-actors performing within the game Red Dead Redemption Online before a live audience. Gemma Fantacci describes Welcome to my Desert Nexus as a“three-act play combining different aspects of performance and online gaming, IRL acting, and avatar dramatization”. A commentary on the myth of the frontier - “a facade upon which the player could paint their fantasies, just as the frontier of digital space is a facade for the same. In thinking about the facade and the false promise of infinity” (Kara Güt) - Welcome to my Desert Nexus is primarily a live performance, one in which things could go wrong - both on a technical and practical level. The actors' performance is recorded and subsequently shown as a machinima. Kara Güt’s Welcome to my Desert Nexus is a groundbreaking hybrid of gaming and theater, literally and metaphorically redefining the notion of “play”, in physical and online spaces. The theatrical performance is imbued with liveness, that special kind of hic et nunc that Walter Benjamin calls the “aura” of the artwork and that Philip Auslander explored in his seminal text Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (1999). Although the play does feature meta referential elements (it was, after all, inspired by Sartre’s No Exit) , it is mostly consistent with the Wild West tropes and conventions of the original source, Red Dead Redemption. The actors maintain their in-character persona throughout the entire play….

Matteo Bittanti

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NEWS: THE MMF MMXXII CRITICS' CHOICE AWARD GOES TO SAM CRANE

WE ARE HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT We are such stuff as dreams are made on has been awarded the 2022 Critics’ Choice Award.

The jury — which comprises Simonetta Fadda, Stefano Locati and Jenna NG — found Sam Crane’s attempt to perform Shakespeare within Grand Theft Auto Online “daring”, “wildly original”, and “pleasantly absurdist”. As one juror wrote, “Ionesco would have loved it”.

We are such stuff as dreams is featured in the NO DRAMA, PLEASE back-to-back program.

Project description: What happens if you try to perform Shakespeare inside a public lobby in Grand Theft Auto Online, a game space notorious for its aggression and gratuitous violence? You might expect the other players in your server — randomly allocated from anywhere in the world — to respond with heavy weaponry, perhaps a mini SMG, or a compact grenade launcher. And indeed, this is often what happens. Yet occasionally you may come across someone responding in an entirely unexpected manner... We are such stuff as dreams are made on appropriates the notoriously violent and misogynistic world of Grand Theft Auto, and transforms it as a space for live performance of Shakespeare. It also questions the very notion of “play”.

Watch an excerpt

A talented stage actor, critically acclaimed for his performances at the National Theatre, Shakespeare’s Globe, in The West End, and on Broadway, Sam Crane began his career playing the renowned Polish artist and theater maker Tadeusz Kantor in A little Requiem for Kantor at the London International Mime Festival, went on to perform with contemporary physical theater pioneers Frantic Assembly, and most recently garnered stellar reviews and an Off West End nomination for his solo performance in Rage of Narcissus by Sergio Blanco. He has collaborated with influential artists such as Sir Mark Rylance, Katie Mitchell, and Robert Icke. A prolific screen actor, Sam has appeared in several television series including The Crown (Netflix), The Trial of Christine Keeler (BBC), COBRA (Sky), Poldark (BBC), Endeavour (ITV) and Call The Midwife (BBC). In the guise of his alter ego Rustic Mascara, he attracted over 50 thousand views in two weeks to his attempts to perform Shakespeare inside Grand Theft Auto Online. His machinima were featured in film retrospectives and art exhibitions in Europe (Videopark, Uzice, Serbia) and the USA (Pandemic Projections: Visions for a New Normal, New Jersey), among others.

Read an interview with Sam Crane

Watch We are such stuff as dreams

Learn more about Rustic Mascara

NEWS: BACK-TO-BACK NO DRAMA, PLEASE

How do you subvert a video game? Well, for instance you can make explicit the homoerotic tension within fighting games by portraying muscular characters as they embrace and exchange bodily fluids. Or you can turn Grand Theft Auto Online into a performative space where Shakespeare is condemned to endlessly respawn. At any rate, no drama, please: we’re just playing with games.

Featuring Sam Crane aka Rustic Mascara and Darío Alva aka cavecanems

Watch No Drama, Please

A CLOSER LOOK AT KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

The current VRAL show features Amir Yatziv’s groundbreaking work Kingdom of Shadows, a multimedia project focusing on an unusual audition: an actress (Neta Shpigelman) is trying to win the part of a computer game character in a successful series, Final Fantasy. The setup is both spartan and dense.

Her performance is evaluated by a famous Japanese computer game director, played by Eliya Tsuchida. Several avatars are auditioned for this role, which requires them to repeatedly cross the thin line that separates reality from fiction, until it completely disappears. A conceptual tour de force, Kingdom of Shadows is also a remarkable technical feat: the human actor is wearing a motion-capture suit on stage that captures her movements and facial expressions and instantly translates them into those of her digital counterpart on a giant screen, who is perceived, by the viewers, as the “real” actor. Her acting thus is simultaneously captured and translated by way of performance-capture technology. We see extreme closeups, weird angles, abrupt moves, and funny gestures, although we are perfectly aware that something is lost, including the fact that Shpigelman — gesticulating onstage in her black bodysuit — is extremely pregnant.

Kingdom of Shadows is a meditation on the proliferation of doppelgängers, replicas, and avatars in contemporary culture, a theme that also recurs in Yatziv’s latest project, Non Player Character (2021). However, it is not a warning about replacement, extinction or body snatching. On the contrary, the artist sees the avatar as a synthesis of the human and the post-human.

the avatar [embodies] the best of the human and the best of the machine. This is something new for me, but I look at this work as an experiment. What I am trying to do is to combine the strengths of these two agents, the machine and the human being. (Amir Yatziv)

At the same time, the work seems to suggest that any attempts to reach a “solid” emotional connection between the parties involved, suggesting that technologically mediated social distancing today is a prerequisite for professional success and, perhaps, even for emotional survival.

Interestingly, Kingdom of Shadows has been presented under various guises. The current VRAL show features a recording of the live animation performance that took place at the Jerusalem Theater during the Israeli Festival in June 2021, but there’s an additional performance that took place at Artport Tel Aviv 2021 on July 7 2021 which adds new elements, including a new epilogue and a completely different coda. The artist is considering more iterations. In that sense, Kingdom of Shadows is not a single text, but like a video game, is many different texts at once, many possible worlds, an incubator of fantasies.

Matteo Bittanti

EVENT: VRAL #31_AMIR YATZIV (OCTOBER 1-14 2021)

KINGDOM OF SHADOWS

Recording of live performance, sound, color, 11’ 20”, 2021 (Israel)

Created by Amir Yatziv

Actors: Neta Shpigelman, Eliya Tsuchida

Computer graphics: Yuliya Bogonos

Courtesy of the Artist and Galleria Laveronica


Three avatars are auditioning for the role of a video game character under the vigilant eyes of a Japanese game designer. A human actor, wearing a motion-capture suit, executes a set of actions in real life that are simultaneously performed by her virtual counterpart on a giant screen. Spectators see both. Conceived and produced by Amir Yatziv, this live performance blurs the lines that traditionally separate theater from digital gaming and invites viewers to consider the porosity between reality and simulation. Inspired by the romantic encounter of two characters in Final Fantasy, Kingdom of Shadows investigates changing notions of identity, performance, and communication in a screen-based world.

Born in Israel, Amir Yatziv lives and works in Tel Aviv. After receiving a B.A. in Computer Science at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel, he studied Arts at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem. He directed several short films which were often exhibited as art installations as well. Among his solo exhibitions are This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2013), This is Jerusalem Mr. Pasolini, Galleria Laveronica, Modica, Italy (2012), Antipodes, Ramat-Gan Museum of Art, Tel-Aviv (2010). Group exhibitions include Too early, too late. Middle east and modernity, curated by Marco Scotini, Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna (2015), Space Oddity, A capsule exhibition, Kunstverein Nürnberg, Germany (2014), La guerra che verrà non è la prima, 1914-2014, MaRT, Rovereto (2014), Recalculating Route, 4 Mediations Biennale, Poznan (2014), CounterIntelligence, Hart House, curated by Charles Stankievech, University of Toronto, Canada (2014), Time Pieces, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, curated by Marius Babias and Kathrin Becker, Gelsenkirchen, Germany (2014), Measure for Measure, curated by Drorit gur-arie and Hila Cohen-Schneiderman, Petah Tikva Museum of Art, Israel (2014), Give Us The Future, curated by Frank Wagner, n.b.k Berlin, Germany (2014), Artists’ Film International, Whitechapel Gallery, London, United Kingdom (2014), Multiplicity, NURTUREart, curated by Marco Antonini and Hila Cohen- Schneiderman, New York (2014).

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