Hummingbird Premier in Goodman Theatre

Hummingbird is a modern, innovative performance merging live theater and interactive virtual reality by bringing a group of active participants into a shared space for a live performance. This project bridges art, science and live theater through a collaborative research effort between computer science and design faculty and students at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) and Chicago theater directors, actors, videographers and producers. Hummingbird is a live theatrical adventure that questions identity, humanity’s relationship with technology and coming of age in a digital society through the eyes of a gutsy teen who must outsmart her mother’s narcissistic boss and survive a dangerous new technology in a live, immersive adventure. In Hummingbird, participants do not simply observe the performance on a physical stage but also meet on the virtual stage inside the play itself, directly interacting with the actors, each other, and the story. Specific attention was brought to design collaborative tasks to encourage multi-user interaction (e.g. all avatars should simultaneously use pickaxes to break a stone wall to get the secret key). The aesthetics of Hummingbird are inspired by Japanese Ukiyo-e paintings from the 19th century, known as "pictures of the floating world," which prioritized outlined forms and gradient colors. Hummingbird extends traditional live theater and makes virtual reality art accessible to a broader audience, demonstrating how virtual reality can transform theatrical storytelling.

This performance premiered as part of the Chicago’s Tony Award-winning Goodman Theatre New Stages Festival 2021, showcasing innovative and ground-breaking theater works in December 2021 (postponed from September 2020 due to COVID-19 pandemic). Prior to the public premier, we staged 8 performances as a workshop in June 2021 under COVID-19 restrictions for a limited group of invited youth. Following the success of the June workshop, ten public performances were held on December 3rd-6th within the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (due to the COVID closure of the Goodman theater). Each performance included 5 VR participants that actively participated in the outcome of the story wearing a virtual reality headset, and 16 in-person audience members (observers), passively watching the performance play out, observing both the actors and participants as well as their VR experience broadcasted through a large video wall. Each performance’s time was approximately 45 minutes depending on the audience’s engagement. An overview of the virtual space and avatars of the active participants were shown on a large screen/projection from a bird's-eye view for passive engagement. Our performance featured custom designed graphic identities, lab coats, digital screens, floor stickers, origami characters and performance posters, to further immerse participants in the Hummingbird world. Active participants used an Oculus Quest VR headset with embedded hand tracking enabling the use of natural hand gestures for grabbing, touching, often prompting comments such as “How do you track my hand, I am very amazed by it.”

Over 200 people attended the performances and rehearsals including 100 active participants. Most of the audience responding to our survey reported that they enjoyed watching/participating in Hummingbird and felt they were part of the story. The majority of respondents indicated that they were interested in attending similar productions in the future, including live theater shows (without VR) after trying Hummingbird.

Premier in Goodman Theatre

Hummingbird project website