The Skriker’s Technical Marvels Make For Something The World Has Never Seen

David Gibbons

Michigan Vue Magazine Jan. 2007: pp. 45-56.

HFCC’s Virtual Theatricality Lab will debut its rendition of Caryl Churchill’s “The Skriker” today in the Fine Arts Auditorium at 8 pm. It will be the first time the play has been performed in Michigan. The show contains interrelated technical elements such as digital video, stereoscopic 3D projection, real time virtual environment navigation software, and a deliberate abstract and fragmented style The play is complex and difficult to understand, but worth the effort.

The play was written in 1993 and draws heavily on British folklore and mythology as well as legends from Scotland and Greece. According to Director George Popovich the Skriker, a sick but ferocious representative of an older reality, re-emerges from the underworld, determined to strike back at human beings. Popovich also states, [“The Skriker] is hungry for the love and respect human beings once extended to the faerie world-the mysterious creatures and spirits of the Earth who, for tens of thousands of years personified mankind’s understanding of nature.”

The animation of the digital characters was done by motion capture. Motion capture developed in the late 1970’s according to Sigraph.org. Motion capture is used to duplicate the live actor’s movements in a motion capture suit that has magnets attached to various parts of the body. The magnetic field between two receptors creates a digital map of the movements with a digital model program to make a character life-like. The digital mapped movements are then transferred to a program that creates the actual mobile character.

In the “Skriker, “the digital characters appear in stereoscopic 3D, making them appear in three dimensions. This is done via imaging programs and out putted through 3 sets of polarized projectors that create a right-eye and left-eye view of the image, forcing the eyes to maintain separate views to create the illusion of depth in three dimensions when polarized glasses-3D glasses are worn.

According to Popovich, the digital creatures are interspersed throughout the play and are shown to “exist in a dimension gateway between our world and theirs.” The intention is not to present the characters as real, but rather as elements of fantasy that may influence human events.

This isn’t the first time the HFCC Virtual Theatricality Lab has done a play like this. In 2003, they performed Shakespeare’s “The Tempest.” “The Tempest” was performed again in January 2004 at the Kennedy Center’s American College Theatre Festival at Illinois State University. There, the play won a regional award. “We wanted to do something that involved the actor more,” responded Popovich when asked the reason for choosing to do “The Skriker,”

If you are really enthusiastic about great modern theatre or want to see a play that’s slightly out of the ordinary, come see “The Skriker.”