Roger Ebert may have used "Romeo and Juliet" as an example of why games aren't art — falsely positing a game version's requisite happy ending — but the Beijing Film Academy is using game culture to give the Bard's own work a facelift.
In a production of "Midsummer Night's Dream" mounted at the Fringe festival in Edinburgh Scotland, the BFA has adorned Oberon and Titania, the quarrelsome fairy king and queen, with virtual reality gear. From Kenneth Scott's review:
It has been argued that it is the breaking down of identities that leads to Titania and Oberon's brawl, which drives the rest of the story. So it's appropriate that as the show starts they are wearing virtual reality headsets to engage in a fight as characters in a computer game.
The multimedia production also uses game technology to give new life to the sets of the 16th century masterpiece:
The use of games technology to project backdrops makes conventional scenery seem redundant. The high wall behind the stage is painted with light to form moving moonlit "willow pattern" landscapes, fantastical animals, Matrix-like screens or woodblock prints, and finally to bring the building itself to life.
Judging from pictures of the production, the woodcut and shadow puppet motifs seem as much references to post-Windwaker Zelda games as to their roots in 10th century China.
The ECA
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