Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training
Exploring Affordances of Virtual Reality Technology with Contemporary Embodied Actor Training Practices.
Research Institutes:
Institute of Arts, Design and Performance
& Institute of Creative Technologies
De Montfort University, Leicester, United Kingdom
Abstract:
Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training (ECAT) is my proposal for an emergent framework of actor training that utilizes contemporary actor training techniques with virtual reality (VR) technologies. In this research, VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) were used to explore the concept. Utilizing a workshop-based actor training Practice-As-Research methodology supplemented by additional mixed methods of data collection and analysis, ECAT was developed through exploratory actor training workshops with volunteer participants, in which I performed both roles of actor training practitioner and PhD researcher.
ECAT utilizes the affordances that actor training techniques bring to embodying virtual experiences and equally, the vast potential of imaginative scenarios and emotions that VR brings to actor training practices. Within the framework, a methodology for virtual embodiment was developed through the modification of existing actor training techniques and a recontextualization of Gordon Calleja’s Six Dimensions of Involvemen t. Calleja’s concepts, originally produced for video game design theory, was adapted into a framework that can identify, qualitatively analyse and cultivate aspects of focus, presence, psychomotor control and context navigation for the actor. The adaptation of Calleja’s original six dimensions of involvement for the ECAT context, consisted of expanding existing dimensions, or the creation of new concepts: Cybernetic Assimilation, Virtual Object Permanence, Virtual Space Permanence, Alterbiography, Ludic Matching and Emotional Affect.
Through the exploratory application of actor training techniques while cybernetically assimilated within virtual reality environments, specific modifications for the Meisner Repetition and Michael Chekhov techniques were discovered that provided systematic approaches towards achieving and cultivating visceral virtual embodiment. Upon continuous experiencing and practice of virtual embodiment, further affordances of ECAT were found: Imaginative Specificity, Training Cognitive Capacity and Efficiency, Imaginative Accumulation and Experiential Blending.
By Khairul Ikhwan Bin Kamsani
This thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment of the required partial fulfilment of a PhD award
The PhD degree is awarded by De Montfort University
Submitted October 2024
Practice-As-Research Highlights:
This webpage covers highlights of chapters and examples of practice of in this practice-based-research PhD.
Content:
- Objectives
- Contribution to Knowledge
Examples of Practice:Exploratory Workshops & Data Collection Highlights
Exploratory Workshops & Data Collection Full Sessions
Data Collection & Iterative Thematic Analysis Summary
Post-Practice Retrospective Analysis, Reflections & Discussion Summary
Impetus:
The impetus to conduct PhD research was spurred from my years of experience as a video gamer, theatre director and actor trainer. The first video game I’ve played was Contra (1987) as a child on my uncles’ Nintendo Entertainment System. It was the first time that I ‘played as someone else in a given circumstance different from my own’, using my imagination to place myself in another world that my actions could have an effect on. Early on, before even discovering the theatre world, I had years of experiencing ‘play’ in the world s of Pokémon, Metal Gear Solid, Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft and games from the Final Fantasy Franchise; to seamlessly involve myself through action into immersive and interactive worlds in video games was my primer into understanding the concept of theatre play and acting.
Perhaps it was my interest, experience and skill in video games that nurtured my voyage into theatre practices. In 2019, I played through a pop-up VR experience by The Void in collaboration with Industrial Light and Magic, a Hollywood Visual Special Effects company. It was an immersive Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire VR experience, in which participants wore head mounted displays connected to ‘blasters’ that we would use to shoot in VR. They built physical rooms that were mapped to the VR spaces which we had to traverse, including walking on planks, through doors and even had interactive puzzle sections in which we had to work as a team. One player would press physical buttons mapped to a virtual console of an Empire spaceship to solve a puzzle while a teammate had to fend off incoming attackers – the puzzle solver could also intermittently come out of cover to support the fighting. Cleverly, at the start of the experience, we were given character roles, circumstances, objectives, and an imagined world to traverse through – much like what actors would receive when engaging with a play in their training or work. A moment that will always be vividly replayable in my mind was when towards the end of the experience, my team and I found ourselves in a dark corridor of a spaceship trying to find an exit, out of the darkness and silence, we hear and see a red lightsaber illuminate the space, revealing the wielder, Darth Vader, at the end of the corridor – I felt shivers in my body and we all froze for a moment. Until this moment, our blasters have been effective at dispatching oncoming enemy storm troopers, however, being a Sith lord, Darth Vader propelled towards us while deflecting our blaster shots away – I felt real terror as I scrambled backwards, still shooting at him as we attempted to escape.
Of course, there is no real Darth Vader on his way to kill me, but the audiovisual markers that the technology provided for the experience sent my imaginative and perceptive faculties fully into the Star Wars universe, believing that I was about to meet my doom. This experience solidified my perspective that virtual environments through gaming can provide actors with opportunities to access new ranges or imagination and psychophysical engagement in a safe and repeatable process; I wanted to explore the potential of such technologies with actor training techniques, in search of any affordances and limitations.
Key Research Inquiry:
“What affordances can be explored in converging Virtual Reality Technologies with Contemporary Embodied Actor Training Practices?”
Objectives:
i) Design an actor training workshop setting that utilizes Virtual Reality as a core component of experiential learning, leveraging on immersive environments and narratives for actors to expand their acting range and skill.
ii) Develop a structured methodology and a theoretical framework for an actor training process using cybernetic equipment (Television, Computers, Virtual Reality Headsets)
Contribution to Knowledge:
i) A theoretical framework that connects actor training, phenomenology, cybernetics, virtuality, neurocognitive science and cognitive linguistics to an emergent Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training approach.
ii) A practical methodological framework including proposed steps towards achieving Virtual Embodiment, which lays the groundwork into an Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training approach.
Structure of Thesis:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter covers th e impetus behind the research project, my links to practice as a theatre director and acting teacher, the research aims, objective and overarching question. I then contextualized the research between the fields of actor training and virtual reality theory, acknowledging the specific focus of the research being the process of acting training, not performance outcome. I identified the target audiences who may be interested in reading this research and outlining my specific contributions to new knowledge in line with the requirements of a PhD submission.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
The literature review covers key developments in actor training frameworks, from Stanislavsky’s concept of Psychophysical training to the most current approaches to Embodied Acting by Rick Kemp and Phillip Zarrilli. Then references focus on current scholars in philosophy, neuroscience and cognitive linguistics to discuss the process in which an actor perceives, conceptualizes and experiences virtual reality environments. The similarities and differences in the process of perceiving and believing imaginative fiction and VR experiences for an actor is also covered. A major component of VR technology, the highly kinaesthetic controls system will be explored through cybernetic terms. Lastly, there is an overview to Gordon Calleja’s concept of Incorporation and the Six Dimensions of Involvement that he articulates in his book In Game (2011), to set the groundwork for its adaptations into the ECAT framework.
Chapter 3: Methodology; Pre-Data Collection Practitioner-As-Researcher Reflexivity
Through actor training facilitation that I conducted in this research, I identified that I conducted practice-as-research in three distinct phases – before, during and after the practical data collection workshops. Thus, I rationalized chapters three to five to be extended and continuous methodology explorations in different phases of the research. Chapter Three being initial methodology preparation, positioning and reflexivity of current practice at that time before I started the exploratory workshops.
It was acknowledged during the research methodology development process that my actor training facilitation itself was imbricated with research methodology. Actor training facilitation, being an iterative process of practice in communication with the trainee, was informed by the research aims, since the contexts of the actor training workshops were specifically for the research aim, and not purely for actor training using only conventional approaches.
Chapter 4: In-Practice Thematic Analysis; Discoveries in Conducting ECAT Practice-Research
Chapter four reviews the iterative thematic analysis that was conducted during the exploratory data collection workshops. The nascent ECAT theory and methodology was discovered through trial and error, by the co-created knowledge between both the actor participants and the facilitator. Through the exploration of how the actor training facilitation practice was being done to conduct the research, the changes that was made to my practice in responses to all activity within the workshop became the preliminary ECAT framework.
Chapter 5 – Post-Practice Retrospective Analysis, Reflections & Discussion
Chapter five is the analysis, reflection and discussion of key themes after the conclusion of practical data collection workshops. Here I analyse the themes and several pertinent data points from chapter four in hindsight to elucidate further affordances (opportunities, conundrums and limitations) found, attending to the key research inquiry with aims to fill in the gaps identified in the literature review.
Chapter 6: Summary of thesis and recommendations for stakeholders
Chapter six summarises and reviews all earlier chapters to link the research narrative from impetus, inquiry and critical literature that formed the initial methodology. Then how the methodology evolved through an iterative practice-as-research process that began constructing a fledging practical ECAT framework. With the research narrative and the reflections from chapter five, I conclude the thesis with recommendations, considerations and deliberations for future ECAT readers and hopefully, trainees and facilitators.
To read this PhD thesis in full, please contact Khairul at 'contact @ khairulkamsani.com' (remove spaces).
Literature Review Summary
The literature review chapter covered relevant theoretical concepts and approaches to actor training facilitation, liveness, mediatized performance, belief and Calleja’s six dimensions of involvement.
The actor training facilitation literature concluded that current conventional actor training approaches has reached a common consensus towards furthering the cultivation practice of embodied cognition, which acknowledges an inextricable link between the cognitive and physical faculties in an actor that must be developed through holistic means.
Discussions on perception, belief and imagination through cognitive linguistics and neuroscience were highlighted that the imaginative functions of the human body that actors use to conjure characterization and fictional given circumstances to play in use the same neuron structures of the brain to perceive and conceptualize the daily reality of their actor selves. With this knowledge, this research aimed to position the perspective of perceiving virtual reality the same way that actors believe in fictional circumstances, through the lens of the lusory attitude.
Contemporary studies on the use of digital technology surrounding liveness, mediatization of performance and intermedial principles and practices revisited the views towards liveness and presence through mediatization. Current conceptions towards the use of emerging technologies in artistic performance training and creation have shifted towards an attitude with a willingness to explore the potentials, rather than shirk at the previously assumed disruptions they would bring to the actor training studio.
The common questions posited among scholars asked what shape the pedagogical methodology utilizing intermedial technologies would take. As a response to the questions, acknowledging the holistic kinaesthetic affordance that VR controllers bring to the experience of VR, I raised Wiener’s term cybernetics, which concerns the studies of information and control systems between human and mechanical bodies. I proposed that the cybernetic actions of physically moving the hands and head of the actor being mapped to a virtual body was the bridge between felt presence in the corporeal body to the conceptual experience of presence in the virtual world, since the imaginative faculties that conjure the virtual space are the same that actors use to believe in fictional imaginary circumstances. I then Gordon Calleja’s six dimensions of video game involvement, which were recontextualized in the VR actor training context.
The literature review chapter concluded with a summary and gaps in the literature that this research aims to address, that several scholars in the actor training field asked how the requisite skills of an actor can be trained through the use of intermedial technologies.
Methodology Summary
Having established the main frameworks to support this research. The methodology chapter covers the PhD research design, which rationalizes the use of practice-as-research with a mixed methods approach to data collection and analysis. I gave an overview of my conventional actor training facilitation practice through contrasting it with my directorial practice, that the former involves open ended guidance and room for exploration in a constructivist, co-creative approach. I gave justification to the adoption of the practice-as-research approach, acknowledging that my pedagogical practice with actors is iterative, and that the search for the best methods to cultivate their acting skills with the use of VR is the practice of facilitation and also the method of approaching the research inquiry.
I discussed the considerations on which actor training techniques were ideal to be explored with VR, having established in the literature that the techniques should be aimed towards developing awareness, control, and freedom of authenticity of the actors’ instrument. The techniques must also develop awareness, focus and control of navigating the ‘experiences of presences’ (the senses of experiencing visceral, imaginative and virtual places/selves), as well as focus and attention to others, objects and circumstances surrounding them (intentionality). The selected actor training techniques were elements from Stanislavsky, Adler, Chekhov and Meisner exercises and principles.
I then discussed on which VR technology to use in this research. It was decided to use the Valve Index and Meta Quest 2 headmounted displays, given their gyroscopic controllers and headset that allowed for the actors’ corporeal actions to be directly correlated with the resulting virtual actions that their virtual avatars perform. In terms of the selection of virtual environments, two VR games were chosen as the main grounds of data collection, Richie’s Plank Experience and The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. The former affording high levels of affective involvement without requiring intricate cybernetic controls and the latter offering detailed long form narratives, characterization options and spatial environments. I had also employed the Oculus VR First Steps tutorial and two mini-games from Valve’s The Lab, Archery and Slingshot as grounds for training the participants in improving their cybernetic controls.
I then covered the participant profile and sampling size, justifying a relatively small sample size given specific needs of the research, that the research required actors for long periods of time and must have had prior actor training experience in the techniques that I aimed to develop in this research.
Then the data collection methods were covered, identifying that a mixed methods approach was appropriate. The methods included questionnaires, interviews, ethnographic observations of both participant and the facilitator and reflective journals by the participants, facilitation practitioner and the researcher.
The methodology chapter concluded with the ethical considerations of this research. I clarified for volunteer participants that their involvement would be unpaid and over a period of at least a few months, knowing that scheduled workshop sessions would be weeks or months apart. They knew that they would not be paid and would be able to withdraw from partaking at any point. I informed them that the actor training sessions are designed to be rigorous, challenging and potentially uncomfortable, involving playing video games with violent imagery and mature themes. Respondents were aware that their responses and observable behaviours in the workshops will contribute to the data pool within this research for further analysis and potential publishing in the PhD thesis. The participants were also assured that the recordings of their data collection sessions would be kept confidential and in secure archival data storage units.
Examples of Practice:
Exploratory Workshops & Data Collection
This section contains examples of practice through experimental and exploratory data collection workshops.
Here I conducted preliminary actor training workshop interviews with early volunteers. As it was during the COVID period, it was challenging to organize in-studio live sessions, therefore I sought to test examples of practice where actors would interact with me through a virtual medium, as well as with computer generated graphics.
I aimed for these workshops to test the Meisner Technique exercises through live video calls, to find out how the exercises would play out if done through a virtual medium. I also experimented on adapting the technique to be used by an actor with 2D images, and then animated 3D graphics to investigate the potential of cultivating presence between a live actor an computer generated images.
Cybernetic Assimilation Example
As an example for the actors, I demonstrated how smooth their cybnernetic controls of their virtual avatars need to be before they can start to feel a sense of Virtual Embodiment and begin to engage with the ECAT dimensions of involvement. To ensure that their time in the virtual environment is fruitful and to avoid frustration due to a sense of disconnect with the virtual, I required the actors to repeat the controls tutorial section until they are comfortable and adept in navigating through their virtual body.
It was found that, for some actors, even the tutorial section in The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners was to cybernetically challenging if they are not used to controlling virtual avatars, especially using VR equipment. I utilized other tutorial environments, such as Oculus First Steps and The Lab mini-games such as Archery and Slingshot for them to acquaint themselves with the cybernetic equipment and the extension of their body schemas through play and repetition.
Exploratory Workshops & Data Collection
Highlights
As COVID subsided, I commenced exploratory data collection workshops to test the emerging methodology with actors.
Here are 5 videos highlighting key phases in the ECAT process.
(Full session videos are in the next section)
1.
ECAT participants commenced by completing a questionnaire (example here) to assess their suitability and discern key intial information of their profile to adjust the future sessions accordingly. Selected participants attend the first session which is an interview to learn more about both the actor and the exploratory ECAT process.
2.
During the interview, I ask the actors how familiar they are in Stanislavsky, Adler, Meisner, Chekhov, Viewpoints techniques, or for them to explain any other techniques they use in their practice. This is to gauge how much pre-ECAT conventional training I am required to cover with them so that all participants have a similar baseline of the acting training techniques explored in this research. Here I am covering the Meisner technique as taught in my practice. Actors selected for the research have already extensive prior actor training either elsewhere or with me.
3.
After familiarizing the actors with the actor training techniques in a conventional setting, we begin exploring the actors' interactions and experiences with virtual environments through VR games. Some of them require more time to comfortably control equipment and navigate the virtual environment as a virtual-self. Here, Benedict, who is relatively adept at VR controls demonstrates the application of the adapted Meisner technique in his interactions with virtual others.
4.
Another highlight example with Sook Kuan, who needed more time to Cybebernetically Assimilate into the virtual environment, but after she did, she was able to adapt the Meisner technique quickly within her virtual exploration. Being adept at a range of Chekhov techniques that foster internal sensitivity, she also applied those simultaneously, which heightened her felt emotions, further explicated by the Meisner technique affordances.
5.
After hours of virtual exploration, Sook Kuan achieved a sense of Virtual Embodiment through Cybernetic Assimilation. She was able to internalize the visceral emotions felt which arose from virtual experiences, into her recessive body. We then explored the process of her accessing those psychological and emotional memories in the devising and rehearsal of a short scene inspired by the virtual environment.
Exploratory Workshops & Data Collection
Full Sessions
Below are full session examples of practice-research. If you are interested to view sessions with Benedict, Rong Yi and Celine that are not listed here, please get in touch.
Victoria ECAT Explorations Full Sessions
Sook Kuan ECAT Explorations Full Sessions
I have not included all of Sook Kuans sessions here, but below you can see how I shifted tactic from using The Walking Dead:Saints & Sinners to Oculus First Steps to give her more time to achieve Cybernetic Assimillation by simplifying the cybernetic tasks even further. VR games such as The Walking Dead:Saints & Sinners tend to expect players to have a certain level of cybernetic familiarity in controlling video games, thus, the in-game tutorial teaches the new player how the controls work in the context of their game, but does not give much opportunity to improve their ability to navigate with the controls efficiently.
Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training Practical Approaches Summary
Key practical discoveries for the ECAT approach included determining and justifying the modifications to recommended existing actor training techniques to adapt into a virtual environment engagement context. As part of my offer to a contribution to new knowledge in terms of new actor training practices, the emergent ECAT methodology offers adapted techniques to support actors’ skills development in the points below:
1) Support the articulation and amplification of experiences, both visceral and virtual.
2) Identify the infrastructure of the experiences (the makeup of being, doing and the context it finds itself in).
3) Offer methodical means of adjusting the actors’ approach towards crafting lived experience.
I elucidated on certain insights gleaned from using specific types of virtual reality equipment and environments, that including a 2D screen prelude as part of the Cognitive Assimilation period before attaching cybernetic equipment to the actor would be ideal. I derived that some actors benefitted from extended Cybernetic Assimilation periods, which also included longer tutorial time in Oculus First Steps before entering larger virtual worlds such as in Richie’s Plank Experience and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners.
Below is a tier list of steps that an ECAT actor undertakes to achieve Virtual Embodiment, to access the ECAT affordances in their practice：
1) Cognitive Assimilation – Lusory Attitude and Alterbiography Establishment
Similar to the psychological framing that the actor applies towards believing in fictional imaginary circumstances to embodying characters, the actor must apply the same lusory attitude towards virtual characters, objects and environments. The establishment of a virtual alterbiography occurs when the positive lusory attitude accepts the virtual proprioceptive self as the present self in focus, conducting authentically experienced being and doing from moment to moment.
2) Cybernetic Assimilation – Establishing Cybernetic/Virtual/Corporeal Action
Cybernetic Assimilation is achieved when both intentional Cybernetic Action and Cognitive Assimilation are simultaneously executed by the actor.
In conventional actor training terms, embodied cognition is when an actor is viscerally and cognitively aware of the actions they are doing, the contexts surrounding the action, and that they have intentional control and affective responses to their activities. Cybernetic Assimilation is the same type of awareness that the actor has in embodied cognition, except that it is the recognition of the virtual action and its contexts, their intentional and affective response to that action.
3) Virtual Proprioception – Extending and controlling extended body schema of the virtual-self
When Cybernetic Assimilation is achieved and maintained with awareness and fluidity over a period of time, it becomes Virtual Proprioception, which is the demonstration of the actor successfully extending their bodily schema from their corporeal, perceptive, emotive and cognitive faculties towards virtual stimuli through cybernetic equipment.
4) Virtual Embodiment – Alterbiography of virtual-self is intentional, controlled and affective in direct relation to corporeal and character selves at play, with and within distinguished virtual objects and environments.
When the actors’ Virtual Proprioception of a virtual self becomes engaged with a sense of presence, intentionality and being-with-virtual-others within the virtual environment, they have then achieved Virtual Embodiment.
Virtual Embodiment is characterized by Virtual Proprioception conducting itself with context, developed through specific exercises within the VR environment and virtual objects that commence the building of micro-narrative alterbiographies – the recognition of “I am doing” virtual activity or “I am being” a virtual-self. Once micro-narratives inform the actor of their virtual activity, creating context that over time contributes to a macro-narrative alterbiography, that the actor believes in by adopting a positive lusory attitude, the virtual proprioceptive self is bridged together to the actors’ visceral senses, synchronizing cybernetic action and virtual stimuli to be immediately present, active and authentic to them. When Virtual Embodiment is affectively felt, intentionally motivated and actively incorporating the virtual stimuli as authentic phenomenological experience, the ECAT affordances can be accessed by the actor.
5) ECAT Affordances – The virtual-self is phenomenologically experiencing the ECAT dimensions of involvement and can be facilitated to intensify and internalize the experiences into the recessive body for future use.
Affordances of Embodied Cybernetic Actor Training Summary
The affordances of ECAT inform the theoretical framework that is my contribution to new knowledge for the actor training facilitation canon, as a juncture of embodied cognition actor training theories that utilizes cybernetic virtual reality technology as a practical means of cultivating actors’ skills.
Below are pertinent affordances that ECAT proposes for intermedial actor training applications, and how they contribute to the field of actor training:
1) Imaginative Specificity
In conventional actor training contexts, the actor relies heavily on their imagination to overlay fictional circumstances, characters and environments on their actual surroundings, which quite often may be a bare stage or rehearsal room. An actor trainer also relies on the imaginative faculties of the actor to cognitively visualise specific details of imaginary objects, environments and characters. The actor trainers themselves utilize their imagination to recall and conjure images of the objects that they are referring to for the actor. In the case of coaching multiple actors, there is a level of variance in how each actor will process the facilitators’ imaginative profferings. Additionally, the facilitators initial prompt runs risk of morphing even further from the intended image given to the actors the more that the actors apply their own imaginative take on developing the prompt further, with each actor then diverging from each others’ imaginative concept of what is meant to be a shared imaginative scenarios and similar appearances of imagined objects within that shared imagined environment.
Achieving Imaginative Specificity through ECAT allows for the acting trainer to consolidate the perceptions of the actors and actor trainers to have clarity of vision toward specific imaginative play scenarios and environments, including how the actors can engage with and navigate through them. This affordance does not aim to diminish the original imagination of the actors, because it is invariable that even when a group of actors see the same virtual object in a shared virtual environment, their cognitive reception of the virtual stimuli within each individual is their imagination being sparked as experience of play. The shared virtual stimuli serves as an anchor for all perceivers to build further referential spaces and objects together. The technical ability of virtual reality environment building engines to craft simulacra of virtually anything, give the actor trainer the ability to create stimuli prompts for the actors to work with, this affordance being particularly useful for objects that are visually difficult to conceive and maintain with specificity, especially with objects that are unlikely or impossible to exist in the real world. Within the Michael Chekhov technique, exercises such as Imaginative Object, Imaginative Body or their variances invite the actor to imagine objects such as a door made of molten lava, or to imagine that their body is molten lava. In non-ECAT contexts, actors who have not been able to see molten lava in real life, likely know of it through books or television, and understand its concept, its material properties and the potential dangers it represents, but to see a door made of molten lava, is very unlikely. To walk through a door made of molten lava, which can be a Chekhov Imaginative Object or Atmosphere exercise/technique, or to imagine that their body is molten lava through the Imaginary Body exercise/technique, can only be done in the imagination of the actor. But with VR, a molten lava door, that is constantly flowing, glowing and bubbling can be specifically animated and interactable for the actor, giving them specific behaviours and properties of the imaginary object, which they can play with further.
Within the research, Imaginative Specificity assisted the participants in knowing the world of The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, a world of zombies, dilapidated city and rural environments in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse. As an acting coach, if I had prompted them to imagine such a world and the objects within it, each actor would have conjured scenarios and objects in their imagination differently from each other. I would have to explain in incredible detail, taking too much of the session time if I wanted to convey very specific imagery for to the actors to work with – the VR models convey all the information quickly, with specificity and with the potential to be altered easily.
2) Training Cognitive Capacity and Efficiency
As reflected by the actors in the workshops, attaining and maintaining Imaginative Specificity supported by the virtual stimuli eases the cognitive strain of the actors’ brains and allows them to direct their focus on other elements of the moment – their affective state, their options for reactions, other virtual dimensions of involvement and how they contribute to their felt experience of presence in the moment. By continually engaging with the ECAT dimensions of virtual involvement, the actors have been able to engage in virtual embodiment quicker each time, and able to maintain the state of virtual embodiment through cognitive and cybernetic assimilation with ease and familiarity. This repetitive achievement of virtual embodiment creates efficiency in the actor training process by first alleviating any cognitive load of conjuring the audiovisual stimuli, and only having to expend mental and physical energy on interaction and experience.
By optimizing the actor training cognitive expenditure, while engaging with detailed stimuli, the actor trainer is able to position the actors’ learning to be in continually novel moments of experience, offering the actors opportunities to work through them. With the specificity and efficiency of imaginative remoulding that VR offers, actors can encounter new visual prompts to spark new imaginative directions, including practicing cognitive neuroplasticity, which improves over time, allowing the actors imagination to retain new information, images as well as reform them quickly as needed. Neuroplasticity, which is the brains ability to recognize and adapt new neural connections is essential for actors as they must continuously adapt their imaginations to adjust to new stimuli that may change the fictional given circumstances and characterization that they are navigating through.
3) Imaginative Accumulation
The malleability of the virtual environment gives the actor trainer incredible flexibility in creating circumstances for the actors to explore with specificity and efficiency. With the larger range of imaginative objects, environments and scenarios that the actor can experience in ECAT, they can accumulate more felt lived experiences to relate their character and narrative building work to.
For the actor trainer, the application of VR to effectively and specifically train the actors neuroplasticity functions, allows them to spend more time in sessions on creative discussions, experimenting with composition of scenework and details of physical scores to continue developing their range of actions as actors. This process of carefully positioning the actor in safe, calculated but confronting scenarios is the ideal grounds for actors to make breakthroughs in understanding new ways of perceiving, interpreting, being and doing, which by extension, widens the horizons of the actors’ range. By incrementally developing the actors’ range of thinking and doing through new scenarios, the repeatability of VR environments coupled with the efficient application of the actors’ cognitive functions allow for ECAT to repeat these novel experiences until the actors are comfortable and fluid in navigating them.
4) Experiential Blending
Actors conduct and practice experiential blending when manoeuvring through stage plays or film sets overlaying fictional attributes to actual objects. This is a similar process when the actors work through virtual embodiment. In ECAT, actors experience it when the body feels emotions derived from believed virtual scenarios and interactions, as well as when the body is experiencing corporeal senses (touching physical objects) and the imagination is navigating virtual reality. This phenomenon of feeling visceral emotional states from both virtual and corporeal stimuli, using the imagination as the bridge between both realities is not particularly new in the daily lived experience – football fans watching the world cup live on a television feel a rush of joy or sadness when a goal is scored in the world cup, the physical body jumping or slouching in reaction to the virtual stimuli on the screen, or when news reports convey information to viewers which illicit a visceral response to it, is the same process that actors in ECAT undergo. They key distinction is that ECAT utilizes this phenomenon for the development of the actors’ craft. Virtual reality technology is used in training surgeons, military and sports personnel because of the affordance of blending the novel information and experience into their subconscious mindbody, ECAT has a similar goal except that the experiential learning outcomes are not as determinate as a surgeon learning how to perform heart surgery – there are specific things they must do to be successful in their craft, however, the ECAT actor has more reign to explore and even fail at virtual heart surgery, to cognitively and viscerally experience that sensation.
The ECAT framework also affords both the trainer and the student greater clarity on which version of experience they are discussing, which one may require adjustment and how the coach can facilitate the adjustment for the actor. This affordance is demonstrated in the practical methodology of cybernetic assimilation. By having determinate steps and being able to categorize the type of experience that virtual embodiment is comprises of (corporeal/imaginative or virtual action), the ECAT trainer and actor can accurately focus on which area of experience being blended may need to be adjusted.
5) VRTE as a Safety Net for Overwhelming/Dangerous Experiences
Actors’ work tends to require them to navigate scenarios of environments of conflict or imaginary environmental danger. For example, an actor playing in Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611) requires them to imagine navigating through being shipwrecked on a dangerous island. An actor trainer may employ a variety of techniques like Chekhov’s Atmosphere to guide the actor in conjuring the experience of being shipwrecked, they may also include the use of set and props for the actors to support their imaginative work. With ECAT, the actor can be placed in an experience of being shipwrecked with audiovisual stimuli to give their imagination specific detail, in turn allowing the visceral body to experience the emotional response of fear and confusion. With the actor cognitively believing in the virtual stimuli but also subconsciously knowing that their physical body is safe, they are able to place their phenomenological experience more fully in the heightened circumstances. This process is also applicable to abstract imaginative work such as the work with a virtual molten lava door. Sook Kuan had remarked that her ‘death’ in Richie’s Plank Experience felt real for her, and that the memory of the visceral response her body had being hit by the virtual bus was tangible and accessible for her. ECAT offers a substitute to actual danger, as a way to have a sense of such experience in a safe way.
The decision to place actors in potentially overwhelming or dangerous situations must be communicated and discussed with the actor beforehand. For example, in this research, before putting the actor through the ‘nightmare mode’ in Richie’s Plank Experience, I asked the actor if they were comfortable in doing so, and that either one of us can stop the experience if it gets too overwhelming for them. The original Richie’s Plank Experience environment itself offers actors the experience of a potentially dangerous and overwhelming situation – standing on a plank at the top of skyscraper. Each participant encountered the situation in different ways, depending on which ‘self’ they were encountering the situation with – their own personas and motivations, or as an imaginary character-self. This was clear with Victoria and Celine when both of them crossed the plank with heavy trepidation in the first round, but when I had invited them to encounter the simulation as themselves, their personal choice of not stepping outside of the elevator onto the plank motivated their behaviour in that experience. Usefully, the knowledge that the experience was not physically dangerous worked as a safety net for all participants to explore simulated circumstances that would be too dangerous or overwhelming for them, which offered them the affordance of accumulating the imaginative experiences of them.
As an actor trainer, this affordance offers the opportunity to discuss options for training the actor in scenarios that might be too triggering or difficult for the actor to work with. The actor trainer can omit certain things from the experience or adjust the introduction of themes or stimuli in a gradual manner that the actor has agreed that they are comfortable with. This offers the actor an opportunity to be open to new complex themes, emotions and scenarios that can be part of their experience as an actor. The efficient repeatability of virtual environments gives actors time to practice navigating through all the stimuli and the arising emotions within them, and the ability to repeat as needed.
All the above affordances are still emergent, given that the practical methodology is also nascent and require further exploration in future research. Below are some considerations for the three main stakeholders in potential future research, the actor trainer, the actor and the creative technologists, those who might be interested to adopt the ECAT framework for their use or help in developing it further.
Recommendations & Next Steps
Considerations for the Actor Trainer
Actor trainer preparation to utilize ECAT
The actor trainer must be versed in the theoretical framework that scaffolds the methodologies, particularly in the actor training techniques in both the conventional formats and in the ECAT adaptations, intermedial, semiotic and phenomenological theory. The actor trainer ideally should have themselves experienced virtual embodiment through undergoing ECAT training themselves. If not, at least having utilized VR technology for an amount of time to familiarize themselves with the cybernetic controls and the technical setup of the headset, controllers and game environments. Currently, different VR headsets may require different processes in accessing the appropriate game applications, some require connecting to a PC, or other technical requirements that may involve troubleshooting and finding workarounds. This can also be circumvented by having a VR equipment technician who can support the ECAT facilitator in ensuring the setup is smooth, requiring the ECAT facilitator to only focus on the training of the actor.
Potential Future Actor Training Practice Adaptations Identified for ECAT
I would suggest practicing the employment of the full phases of ECAT outlined on pages 159-160, including the preliminary 2D cognitive assimilation preparation phase. I would explore the adaptations and inclusions of Michael Chekhov and Viewpoints principles and exercises within the ECAT approach. And although an affordance of ECAT is that it provides a safe space for actors to explore dangerous or sensitive scenarios, further consideration and ethical safeguarding practices of actors’ experiences should be put in place.
Considerations for the Actor
Preparation and intention for ECAT training
At the moment, given the specific actor training techniques adapted into ECAT, actors need to have prior actor training in Stanislavsky, Adler and Meisner. To also have Chekhov and Viewpoints is a bonus, but currently not necessary. Actors should ideally be open to the concept of utilizing VR technology to supplement their actor training, if they have no intention towards adopting the required lusory attitude for believing in virtual environments to be a place for being and doing, the technology nor would the ECAT framework be able to able to contribute to their acting training. Actors must acknowledge that ECAT training is not instantaneous, just as conventional actor training approaches require consistent and prolonged effort, ECAT offers some new opportunities and level of efficiency in supporting their training, but virtual embodiment nor the other affordances covered can happen without the actor intentionally working towards them.
Considerations for the Creative Technologist
Generative AI character and world building interactions
Currently, this ECAT approach utilizes VR games and experiences that are not created for actor training purposes, and yet some affordances were found in applying this exploratory framework within those virtual environments. These premade virtual environments allow for a specific range of experiences that the game designers sought for when building it, which can provide useful specific scenarios and emotional explorations for actors if they were seeking such experiences. However, a limitation in using these games is that it is currently quite difficult to modify specific elements within the game, for example the character and world designs, narrative writing, the layout of environments and the interactable objects. The character interactions and narrative outcomes of the game are usually determined and do not offer much as much improvisatory potential as interactions with other live actors would. At the moment, given that ECAT is still an emergent approach, there is still much to explore in terms of using different virtual environments, but in the future, the creative technologist may want to consider developing a VR platform that can adapt to the needs of the actor trainer quickly, for example if they would like to have the actor experience acting in a vivid forest, then a haunted castle, including specific non-player character agents that the actor can interact with to develop spontaneous and improvisatory narratives.
Conventional video game design and building processes would require long periods of time for coders to implement changes in a video game environment, depending on the complexity of the change and how many elements in the game engine would be affected. However, new strides in the video game engine industry have been made in the past year, particularly with Epic’s release of Unreal Engine 5.2, that includes a rich marketplace of assets and tutorials for technologists to use in making their own 3D VR worlds. Unreal Engine 5 has VR integration capabilities, as well as adding ChatGPT as a plug-in modification to enhance the players interactions with the world through artificial intelligence (AI). An example of this can be seen here, in which YouTuber BrainFrog attaches ChatGPT to the character models that players can interact with verbally in VR, and the non-player characters respond to the player in a spontaneous and realistic manner, improvising new narratives from the players’ verbal prompts.
This application of ChatGPT in virtual environments to procedurally generate new avenues of unpredictable narratives and scenarios for the player opens a new era of role-playing gaming and its potential for ECAT. Additionally, with the players’ prompt being entered through their vocalizations, just as BrainFrog demonstrates, this adds a new dimension of voice training and characterization development when the players must not only embody the virtual-self through action, but also by voice. At the moment, AI in role-playing scenarios such as in the example can generate speech of the premade character models and move them through preset environments. I believe that it wouldn’t be long before AI can also generate new environments and characters as well to create entirely new games and virtual experiences depending on the players’ prompts. Video game developer Timothi Ellim has just begun his PhD at De Montfort University, exploring the potential of applying generative AI models in VR and AR (augmented reality) video games. While the potential for creation through these technologies would be groundbreaking in both actor training and video game design, the ECAT creative technologist would have to consider the ethical implications concerning copyright and intellectual property, as well as ensuring that the generated virtual world stays within safe experiential boundaries depending on the user.
Research Next Steps
The findings in this research have revealed a new horizon in actor training that can be pursued further. Reiterating that ECAT does not aim to replace conventional actor training practices, it is an avenue of opportunity that can give actors a range of embodied experiences that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with only the imagination. Physical touch between actors, and the emotional affordances that it brings is an element in the theatre that intermedial technology cannot yet replicate – and I question if there is a need to seek such a method.
However, I intend to take this research further by continuing the exploration of all the Meisner levels, further Chekhov technique adoption and possibly the incorporation of Viewpoints techniques within the framework. I also am aiming to deduce a method in which VR, motion-capture (mocap) technologies and generative AI systems can come together. In the workshop sessions of this research, I observed that the headset and the controllers inevitably restrict the movement of the actors, especially if it is wired to a computer. The actor is restricted to a specific playing area in the studio, their hands are not free to grip objects in the corporeal and they must be wary to not tilt their heads at an angle which would cause the headsets to fall over.
Vicon, a world leading motion-capture technology developer announced their ‘markerless’ volume in 2023, which is groundbreaking in their field, given that motion-capture systems had traditionally relied on ‘markers’, small points of reference that the cameras pick up on the mocap suits of the actors, in order to feed the positioning data of the actor into the virtual environment. With markerless technology, the actor becomes as physically free as they would be in the conventional training studio, but now with the ability to see themselves in the virtual. I hope to eventually capitalize on markerless mocap technology, procedurally generative AI environments, character and narrative with less restrictive VR headsets to see how virtual embodiment can be further elevated through the ECAT system. Simultaneously, I can apply the ECAT system with existing technologies to explore how it can be designed specifically for specific production and rehearsal needs. Given the rise of virtual production methods and even its introduction into higher learning curriculum, perhaps in time the ECAT system may become an essential area of an actors’ training regime.
At the end of this thesis, I reflect on the main question proposed within the introduction: “What is the future of actor training?” In my view, all that I’ve done in 2021-2024 for this PhD had given me some answers for when I asked that question in 2016 at the start of my Master’s degree. Back then in 2016, I had some semblance of an idea that the process of exploring, effecting and experiencing imaginative worlds through video gaming since my youth had informed my professional practice as a theatre director, acting teacher and sometimes actor, but had not the means of expressing how it has. The completion of this research has resolved within me the belief that digital worlds, particularly those actualized through virtual cybernetic technologies, exist because of human imagination, and that contemporary imagination is conceived by perceivable presence regardless of physical distance. The years now that I’ve spent in Ragnarok Online, World of Warcraft, Overwatch and many other virtual worlds are a part of not only my childhood, but my current lived experience – those worlds are real to me, just as real as the worlds I craft in the theatre. Thus, with this new knowledge I have gained through conducting this research, I now ask, ‘what is the future of embodied cybernetic actor training?’