The Princess Bride by Orange Bucket Acting Troupe on Rec Room

Orange Bucket Acting Troupe performs The Princess Bride

The Orange Bucket Acting Troupe is a group on the social VR platform Rec Room which does actual live drama performances (well, they used to as their active status is spurious).

Their debut performance was a complicated and elaborate production of The Princess Bride – a play based upon the film based upon the novel by William Goldman (one of my favorite works of literature).

Here is a highlights reel of the production:

There are a few full performance videos around and I will include some here but first some other pieces.

For instance, here’s a Creator’s Spotlight:

Here is a Rec Talks episode which goes into the logistics of performing a live theatre play in virtual reality:

The In The Keep Podcast did an episode with the troupe as well:

As many of you know, my early background is in theatre (I have both undergraduate and master level degrees in acting and directing and I teach theatre production at the university today). So, I was quite excited to see that DrummerGeek, one of the organizers for the Orange Bucket Acting Troupe, was kind enough to post an actual manual for the special custom theatre the troupe uses for their performances. See OrangeBucketTheaterBase Manual for the full breakdown.

Orange Bucket Theatre Base Manual

Here is the Halloween 2018 performance saved by Mamamonkey:

Here’s an early October performance posted by PSVR Frank:

Railborn posted the longer performance debut for the Rec Room developers:

One special performance post by I Kill Pigeons is the full play from the perspective of the actor playing the roll of Westley.

This is all well and good . . . but if you don’t know what Rec Room is, it’s a bit on the gibberish side. Rec Room is a multi-platform social program that users employ to play games or just hang out. It is predominately used in Virtual Reality (I play it via the Oculus Quest, Rift S, or HTC Vive) but it can also be played with more traditional flat media such as PC or newer iOS devices like the iPad or iPhone. An Android version is in the works.

I have played games or hung out with folks – friends, family, and strangers – who are spread out all over the world. I have also conducted meetings, meetups, and even classes using the platform in custom rooms.