For a long time, the meaning of drama has been solidified to refer to the performance behavior that is performed in the theater under circumstances and has a relatively stable relationship with the audience. Especially after Ibsen's realistic drama and Stanislavsky's methodology entered the country and became the training method of most art colleges, the fourth wall between the audience and the stage seems to have become the default aesthetic standard. At the same time, some small theater artists are committed to challenging the traditional audience relationship, and have produced a great impact. Some of the earlier works of Meng Jinghui and Lin Zhaohua, for example, can be included in this category. They regard the audience as a part of the performance and incorporate the audience relationship into the overall drama design, so as to achieve the purpose of enhancing the audience's participation in the narrative. And in their long practice, the new generation of drama audience also began to get used to this kind of participatory drama narrative. In particular, the emergence and popularity of VR technology seems to give a new direction for the development of drama. This article will give a brief review of the integration history of VR technology and drama, and reflect on its characteristics.

Early VR technology and the fusion of theater

During the first VR boom in the 1980s, the University of Kansas experimented with the integration of VR and theater. In 1993, they set up a virtual reality drama research division called I.E.VR. The department's first work was based on the then-concept of VR, which allows viewers to change perspectives in computer-modelled 3D images with the illusion of "moving through them". The second project was based on the then-virtual reality glasses I-Glasses! The horizontal perspective of the glasses has two LCD screens. Through the glasses, the audience can not only see the actors on the stage, but also see the imaging in the LCD screen, so as to achieve the superimposed visual effect. At the same time, the glasses are equipped with headphones will also play a designed sound. In this stream of consciousness work, glasses enhance the expression of the narrative protagonist's inner chaos.

It is true that these early practices are somewhat out of date when we discuss them. After all, the concepts and techniques of the time were different from those of today. However, the design concept of the hardware is not significantly different from that of today: creating images or audio to enhance the viewer's visual and auditory experience. However, the complaints and discomforts of the audience at the experience level at that time have not been well solved up to now: some audiences are not used to the experience of wearing glasses; Some audience members are more interested in the actual performance and take off their glasses; There are also audiences who can not take into account the narrative mode of two scenes at the same time. However, in general, the early experiments on the integration of VR and drama have keenly captured the rationality of VR as an auxiliary means, which is even instructive to the current practice.

The fusion of contemporary VR technology and drama

In the last decade, VR technology has again become a hot topic in the market, and the theater industry has begun to rethink how to integrate the two. With the broadening of the concept of drama, more and more practitioners from different fields have begun to participate in the creation of VR drama. Here, I will introduce different explorations into VR theater from academia and the theater industry.

NYU launched a VR pilot project called "To Be With Hamlet" back in 2014. The project created a virtual reality scenario of Hamlet, allowing viewers to walk through it and watch the performance. However, due to its lack of interactivity and rough production, it did not receive favorable reviews, and the project began to fade after its premiere in 2017. The project oversimplified the idea of creating a scene and equating it with VR fusion, while ignoring the importance of narrative -- a key issue that perhaps the project leaders from the engineering school had overlooked in the first place, and which led to the project's failure.

The UK's National Theatre launched an Immersive Storytelling Studio project in 2016 to explore the integration of VR and theatre; The Royal Shakespeare Company is leading a research group, including the British Philharmonic Orchestra and Punchdrunk, to explore the use of VR in theatre. These traditional theater companies rely on their advantages in the narrative of drama to create some popular works. All Kinds of Limbo by the British National Theatre has attracted more than 90,000 viewers in five months, with a satisfaction rate of over 94% in the audience survey. It was a successful experiment, and it's a testament to the central role of narrative power throughout.

The problem with VR and drama

If the definition of drama is broadened to include all kinds of narrative, a key question can be raised -- how to strengthen the narrative power of content? This is an area where many content creation companies need to improve. There are too many works with fine graphics that are not at an entry-level in narrative power. And these problems, we might as well look at the traditional drama industry is how to solve, especially many of the problems have long encountered, but did not receive the due attention. Early integration of VR and theater has shown that technology is never the biggest barrier, but the ability to tell a story and direct the audience's attention is the core. From this point of view, VR is attached to content as a technical means, rather than being guided by VR's technical capabilities. Rather than discussing the integration of VR and the theater industry, it is more about how to integrate the strengths of the theater industry into the overall content creation of VR. In this way, the VR industry will also achieve healthier development.