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| Makb3th Trailer - | ||
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Makb3th Archive
(Sketches by designer Sally Pitman, photographs by John Chapman, Luke Power, Simon Byford, Karen Hibberd and Liza Frank)
Makb3th aimed to merge live performers with new technology to create a different kind of theatrical experience. The script was a modern version of Shakespeare's classic set in a data haven on an abandoned oil rig. The system administrator, Root, is persuaded by his girlfriend to kill the founder of the company and take his place. Fuelled by amphetamines and a severe lack of sleep his killing spree continues.
While the actors were on-stage, three video screens displayed simultaneous events in different parts of the oil rig. These sequences were rendered into ASCII images and allowed real 'meat' actors to interact with vitual ones. The screens also contained areas to show icons, system messages, maps, status reports, dialogue boxes, command lines and a speed reader which displayed the entire text of Macbeth one word at a time. During the performance SMS text messages were sent to members of the audience. These contained messages from the characters and resonant Shakespearean quotes.
The show opened at The Arts Centre, Norwich, and toured to Suffolk and Cambridgeshire during March and April 2003. It attracted national interest and was featured on BBC television and in The Guardian newspaper. The project was publicised virtually using a trailer and our show-based game DuncanKong.
The Cast
DUNCAN
Duncan is an idealistic techno-libertarian. Fifteen years ago he occupied a vacant oil rig in international waters in the North Sea. He filled it full of state of the art technology and named it Illyria, the world's first free data haven. He remains committed to the priciples of freedom and privacy. Clients hire sections of the Illyrian servers to use entirly as they like - no questions asked. Unfortunately, the international community is not happy with this arrangement, assuming Illyria to be a virtual hotbed of hackers, terrorists and paedophiles. Duncan was played by Jo Edye.
ROOT
Root is a world-class techno-geek who can pretty much hack into any system in the world. Duncan first noticed him when he broke into the Illyrian network and promptly recruited him as head of security. Root enjoys going head-to-head against spooks who try to access Illyria's confidential files. Root was played by leighton Williams.
ROZ
Roz is a specialist in virtual law. She is Illyria's legal representative and Root's girlfriend. She divides her time between the rig and her office in The Hague and provides a vital link to the outside world. She also drives a chopper. Roz was played by Nicki Dixon.
BEVAN
Bevan has been friends with Root since they took his ZX81 apart to see how it worked. Their parents learned two things; lock away all computers and itemise the phone bill. The two boys grew up in virtual space and can almost read each other's minds. If Root is hacking your system, you can be sure that Bevan is somewhere watching his back. (insert ianbrownlie.tiff) Bevan was played by Ian Brownlie.
MERRICK
Merrick was a journalist who came to write an artcle about Illyria. He was profoundly affected by Duncan and, while his article made it back to his editor, he never did. He earns his keep by writing copy and fixing hardware and has become totally committed to the philosophy behind Illyria. Merrick was played by Jerry Ferley.
Roger Caulfield - Jon Creek
Richard Mahler - Trevor Simpson
Jade Stryke - Toko Sanger
The Mole - Andy Bennet
Jenny - Jo Worley
Client 22 - Rupert Redington
The Voice of the BBC - Harry Harrold
Written and directed by Panda
Technical Director - Rupert Redington
Assisted by Neil Dabson
Music composed and performed by Tim Lane
Design and Costumes - Sally Pitman
Lighting - Jo Moore
Sound - Ann Charles and Chris Bond
Graphic Design - Geoff Somner and Accent Design
Web design & virtual scenery - Simon Byford
Duncan Kong coding - Paul Byford
Editor - Paul Strickland
Fight Choreography - Ruth
Education
The project also had a strong education content. The company
undertook a three day residency at Thurston College, Suffolk, where hundreds
of students had the opportunity to watch rehearsals, assist with preparations
and learn about the integration of technology into theatre.
Hundreds of year 9 students across the county participated in workshops which
explored aspects of Shakespeare's Macbeth in preparation for their SATS exams.
Children from the drama group at Norwich Arts Centre acted as mobile phone
guinea pigs during rehearsals for the show and also pumped the cast for careers
advice.All in all our educational program benefitted 1000 children between
the ages of 8 and 16.
Set Design
The set design was constucted around the three main projection screens with everything else kept to a minimum (simple/black box). The screens contained:
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the video images - some converted to moving ASCII art
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Background images of sea, platform and cloud
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system messages
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sections of the Illyrian web page
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resonant quotations from Shakespeare's Macbeth
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wireframe animations based on the Makb3th website.
Technical
Open Source
PirateUtopia.org is committed to the creative application of Open Source Software. If you're not familiar with the broad tenets of the open source movement you'll find cogent explanations here and here.
The use of such software is not only (in our view) an ethical
imperative, it also allows us to do things which would previously have been
prohibitively expensive - all of a sudden it's as if we've got a virtually
unlimited number of talented programmers on the team, all of them sharing
their work and all of them keen to see new things happen. The unprecedented
explosion in the amount of code which is being written and shared over the
net along with the speed at which Linux is maturing as a cutting-edge-cool
multimedia operating system generate fresh ideas and possibilities for us
almost every day. 
The use of so many different software components seems to be keeping us flexible, we're not quite there yet, but the aim is to be able to change any technical element of the performance almost seamlessly, with the kind of speed and facility with which an actor can produce changes of intonation or position.
Its liberating to work with technology like this, when for once its not just the output of the system that matters, but the way its produced. The ethos of the Open Source movement is very much in tune with the cooperative process of a theatre project like this one and as a result some interesting things are beginning to happen. Two parts of the process which can so easily get separated, technicalities and performances, are feeding off each other in what seem to be new ways because for once they really do share an ideological space.
Some Gory Details:
At the heart of our systems is the Linux
kernel. Pretty much everything we need is in the later 2.4 series,
though we do find the low-latency and preemptible patches help us a lot
and we use framebuffers extensively so keep our eyes on development in
that area (of which more later). In terms of distributions RedHat 7.3
has been serving us well, though some of our systems are roll-your-own
with help from the Linux From
Scratch project.
We try to separate roles between machines (for clarity - upgradeability and disaster limitation) and then coordinate them across a network. Some systems pretty much look after themselves and we use ssh for almost everything else, sometimes interactively but mostly driven through a PHP based web interface. Most of our needs are simple enough - text messaging to the audience is handled by a combination of MySQL, PHP and KAPOW's SMS gateway - without whose generous sponsorship we couldn't afford it and without whose expertees we wouldn't have figured out the efficient way to do it. Webpages are served by apache and files are shared when needed over NFS.
The most direct impact on the audience is achieved through display technologies. We use matrox cards almost exclusively, primarily for their fantastic framebuffer performance but also for their crisp, strong signal and their excellent multi-head support. Our favourites are the quad head PCI based G200MMS and the dual head AGP G550. All our main displays run a patched X server, XDirectFB from directfb.org - its controllable window transparency is unlike anything we've seen elsewhere and allows us to build up layers of imagery onscreen in realtime. At present we use a very simple window manager - evilwm, which makes it easy to nudge windows around and to strip them of all borders and decoration. For putting text on screen we use xterm and tail. Everything else is made up of still images (mostly by way of bsetbg), animated gifs (shown with gifview) and, increasingly, flash animations. For makb3th we wanted a slightly retro feeling and so got into showing our live and recorded video as ASCII art. All of this is done via the aalib library from the Ascii Arts Project which plugs into VLC which handles all our streaming and display needs for video
In other departments our videographer is toying with cinelerra and
our office systems have moved to OpenOffice and Evolution...
For any questions about the technical aspects of PU's work please email rupert@neontribe.co.uk
The Design
Costume Design
It was important that the design of Makb3th reflected its comtemporary cultural setting and focus on technology while retaining some reference to its Shakespearean origin. The following are pages from our designer's diary.
Scrapbook by Sally Pitman, Costumes by Sally Pitman and Amanda Harrold
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Transcript from a page of design notes.
Design Notes -
Duncan
Commune - Natural Lead Thru Altruism
Edye - Fresh food in short supply Dr. Who Scarf Tom Baker, Security and Privacy
Boilersuit . . . . Self-sufficient Began the commune, Ubiquitous Leather W/coat,
FisherKing/Big Lebowski (Deerstalker and Timberwolf)
Roz - Lady Macbeth
- Freelancer not a citizen of Illyria, Lawyer, Dodgy ambitious woman
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|Lady McB
|Doesn't care who gets hurt in the process of her
|meglomaniacal path. Fuck the King
|appears the innocent flower . . . .
|in fact the serpent beneath.----.
|Manipulative Bitch
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utility - airmans hat - music headphones and infor visors -
ultimate escape - kills herself from guilt
Root (Macbeth)
Tubs,Coffee game players
Enjoy challenges - interested in pitting wits against best hackers . . . .
compertitive they're a bit of skill
Kilt for Tubs
---------------------------------------------------------
|mc. delusions of grandeur
|scared if his own reputation if he slays king
|Paranoid . . .
|trecherous tyrant
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Bevan (Banquo)
tea. Ian Brownlie
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|B: will be rewarded karmically-
|tho will die by murderous hands employed my Mc.
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Ministers of darkness tell us truths in little things ~
to betray us into deeds of greatest consequence.
Merrick (Macduff)
ex online techno mag employee.
Leighton Comp. hardware technician.
Sympathetic to Duncans cause and ideas
beliefs in freedon and privacy.