How can we develop collective virtual reality (VR) spaces in theaters, where spectators are not isolated behind their headsets? How can we truly hybridize virtual and physical scenes, and create gateways to navigate between these worlds?

Scènes Augmentées (2023-2025) is a project serving artists and performance venues to develop the potential of virtual reality (VR) in artistic creation and in theaters, for artistic experiences that bring audiences into the theater. Scènes Augmentées is both a modular technological device and a platform to support the development of VR applications for theatrical artistic creation: on stage, with live performers and large-capacity audiences.

Together with our partners, we are deploying a technological solution for live performance venues, combining a physical stage with its virtual double, and synchronizing the performance of on-stage performers in this digital universe. Thanks to a local multi-user VR stream device, spectators physically present in the auditorium can navigate from their seats between the (live) show presented on stage and its digital augmentation, visible in a virtual reality headset that they can remove and put back on at will.