#1520: Design Breakdown of One-on-One Immersive Theatre piece TM with Ontroerend Goed’s Alexander Devriendt

I dig into my archives to unpack the one-on-one, immersive theatre piece that I saw online back in 2021 called TM that used a Socratic dialectic to interrogate you as you’re going through a process of joining an imaginary cult. I spoke with Ontroerend Goed’s artistic director Alexander Devriendt to get a lot more context for how he designs immersive theatre productions for folks who typically don’t like immersive theatre.

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Music: Fatality

Rough Transcript

[00:00:05.458] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast. Hello, my name is Kent Bye, and welcome to the Voices of VR Podcast. It's a podcast that looks at the structures and forms of immersive storytelling and the future of spatial computing. You can support the podcast at patreon.com slash voicesofvr. So today's episode, I'm going to be diving into a piece that I saw by an immersive theater troupe called Untrue and Unhooked. I saw it back in 2021 during the pandemic, and I'm going to be talking about the It was a one-on-one immersive theater piece, and I was reminded of it when I was doing my podcast with Agnes Callard talking around the Socratic immersive experience. This was very much a one-on-one dialectic, a dialogue where you're mysteriously having this conversation, you don't know the full context, and over time you eventually realize that you're being recruited for a cult. And they're diving into all these really deep questions around the principles of the cult that they created. So Alexander Durvaint is an immersive theater creator who has said that he likes to create immersive theater for people who don't like immersive theater. And so he's got this really interesting mix integrating the different components of theater where you can passively consume it. You don't need to take action at certain points in time. But at the same time, there are certain immersive and interactive experiences that he's creating that you get a lot more of if you actually are participating in it. So it's a bit paradoxical, but I've seen at least five pieces of theirs now. I saw Artificial back in 2019. I saw TM back in 2021. And then I saw Funeral at IFA Doc Lab in 2022. And then he had a couple of pieces that were at IFA Doc Lab 2024. There was a very unique prototype experience that involved a box and an audience with no actors or anything. And so it's kind of a a self-contained performance where the audience becomes part of the performance. And then Thanks for Being Here, which is a very unique type of theatrical performance where, again, the audience is unwittingly participating in the performance in a way that becomes more clear as time goes on. One of the things around Drew is that sometimes it's difficult to really unpack experiences without full on going into spoiler territory. And so I kept on thinking about this experience, especially when I was talking to Agnes Callard, because I was thinking about this concept of the Socratic immersive experience where you can have highly dynamic, engaging conversations with another person. And if there's a theatrical setting and context, then you can really start to push that in very interesting directions, which I think is what this piece of TM is doing. So this is a piece where you're essentially joining a cult. And I'm going to read through the 11 principles of this cult just to give you a bit more context, because it's coming up on like four years since I saw this experience. And so sometimes when I do the podcast, I have these conversations and just help to capture what the experience even was. But I think these 11 different manifesto principles will help you give a broader context for the types of themes that were being explored within the context of this piece. So TM, we hold the following to be true. Number one, on the scale from one to 20, we are all good people. We are better than we think we are. Number two, we do not kill. We are reluctant to commit evil. Number three, we can imagine being dangerous. We know what violence looks like, but we choose not to use violence as an option. Number four, fearing other members is a waste of time. It distracts us. Number five, we know that evil is strong, loud, and exceptional. We know that good is ordinary, typical, the usual. Number six, We are aware that we base our opinions more on emotions than on facts. We are manipulatable, but in the end, we try to return to reason. 7. We are masters of imagination. We create the most beautiful and the most horrible stories. That is our weakness and our strength. 8. The possibility that we are wrong about you, that you are not a member, is smaller than winning the lottery. 9. We don't have to like each other. We may not, but that's fine. We don't have to. 10. 10. We all worry if these statements are true. We don't always dare to believe them. We have doubts. 11. We care for each other. We even care for small triangles. We all try to make the world a better place. So I think that gives a bit of context for this cult that you're joining. These are some of the principles that they're organizing these interactions. It's basically an interview process where by the end of it, you end up joining this cult and that there's an onboarding and offboarding where you get to see other people and you're kind of like, who are you? You don't know if they're actors or not, but you end up realizing that the other people who are onboarded with you in this waiting room are other people who are about to have their own one-on-one experience. And at the end, you all come back together and debrief everything that you've gone through. So that's kind of like the structure of the experience. And I'll be diving into much more details for how this TM experience was architected and designed. So that's what we're coming on today's episode of the Voices of VR podcast. So this interview with Alexander happened on Monday, May 3rd, 2021. So with that, let's go ahead and dive right in.

[00:04:53.095] Alexander Devriendt: I'm Alexander de Vriend. I'm artistic director of Entrouvent Goed, a theater performance group that's now almost celebrating its 20 years. It's happening now. And I make theater performances. And at the core, they're always immersive for me. Doesn't necessarily need to be interactive or something like that. And since shortly, we're diving a little bit into the digital because of this age with a new show called TM.

[00:05:19.500] Kent Bye: Great. So here on the Voices of VR, I've been covering a lot of virtual reality experiences and generally immersive entertainment. And I see that there's this fusion of immersive theater and virtual reality, especially when it comes to live performance. And so I see that there's going to be a lot more theatrical influence in the future. And so that's a big reason why I wanted to have you on and unpack this experience. So I'm just curious to hear a little bit more as to your background and your journey into what you're doing now with all the different influences that you're pulling into an experience like this.

[00:05:50.680] Alexander Devriendt: I think we always started as a sort of like what happens on stage is part of the room you're in. Even when we're on the stage, I see the black box of theater always as not the stage itself, but like everything in it. And that resulted quickly in experimenting with form. Like, for instance, one of the first performances we did was called The Smile of Your Face, where we blindfolded people into a wheelchair and they went alone on a sort of sensory journey. But also sometimes when I wanted to make a show about democracy, for instance, I gave my audiences voting pads so they could vote actors offstage. So I always see form and content need to really come together and the experimentation that is possible in forming the black box of theater always gave me much more room to find this immersive element as a port to more one-sided mediums like literature or movies or television. theatrical in its essence is always a conversation. It's always going two ways, even in the most classical form of play, your presence is still needed or should be needed. And I just take that one step further, I think.

[00:07:04.448] Kent Bye: You know, I had a chance to see a piece about artificial intelligence that you did at DocLab back in 2019. And then you did a piece here recently that DocLab reached out to me actually and got me in to see a show of a piece called TM. And I didn't know anything going into it really. And I think that's actually better. For myself, my own experience to not know anything about what I'm about to experience because then it becomes just like a delight. So at one hand, if people want to go see it, just go see it and take my word for it and then come back to this. But how do you describe what this is? Especially if you're trying to get the word out, do you rely upon other journalists, like what they say about it or have a website that didn't have too much information about what was going on? So like, how do you describe what TM is?

[00:07:50.865] Alexander Devriendt: I would say like, I'm with you. Like this show is made for, if you don't have spoilers, I think it's best. It's not that like there's a real spoiler there, but it's nice to go in from the perspective. What I always chose is there's a secret organization. If you want to know something more than your word for it, there's a secret organization there. And that wants to recruit as many people as possible. And in these times of Corona, where we can't meet face-to-face, we are recruiting people online, right? So you're invited to come online on a designated time and see if you can be part of our organization.

[00:08:27.443] Kent Bye: I think another part that is interesting about this experience is that it's a one-on-one experience and you really get a lot of intimate one-on-one time, but yet at the same time, you have actors that have to interact with these audience members one-on-one. It's a show that to really scale up, you also have to scale up the labor and the actors that are doing this. And so I'm very curious about the logistics of how you do that in terms of how do you train these actors and yeah, just a little bit of that. one-on-one dimension of that.

[00:08:59.513] Alexander Devriendt: It was a weird one, this one, I have to say. Like, we were forced to rethink a lot of things, not only from a perspective of how to play a show online, but also in production elements and financial elements and, like, I don't know. I think for me, that was the beauty of this project that with the whole team, I'll go a little bit further in time if I can. But I think at the beginning of lockdown, I was supposed to have a premiere a month after lockdown from an, you could say, normal proscenium end on show. And then lockdown happened. And I was a bit like, I'm going to sit this one out. Like our strength of Unto and Toot is international touring and physical experience, like physical being there. Like, I need you in the room. We need to be there. That's the strength of theater. And for a while I was happy to be there, like just watching other people maybe find room and things to do. But I was also really disappointed in the adventures or the endeavors I saw other theater groups making. And it seemed like the most classical groups started streaming first. because of course they don't need me to be there. Like that doesn't always feel, I think the most classical theater doesn't always feel like the most mutual conversation you could say. So whether I was sitting behind my screen or not it didn't really matter. So for me the streaming of theater was like the first thing they went for and it felt like the worst thing possible because yeah you will lose to Netflix and movie because you're not used to having this You lose your biggest strength as a theater group or as a theater experience. So I was thinking and I felt like maybe the strength of our work or the strength of theater is not necessarily a physical presence, but just the presence. It's needed that you are there and you watch. And of course, you can closely come to a one-one conversation then, because then I can give you the fullest attention. Which of course makes it financially also, productionally also, the worst type of show you can do. Because for every visitor, I need one actor. So you're always limited in capacity and limited in resources. But quickly, when I had this idea for a worldwide organization... I also quickly felt, what if we take this literally? There's a lot of actors all over the world, a lot of theaters who are out of a job. They're sitting at their home and they want to play theater. It's probably the same here as in Portugal and Brazil or whatever. So we reached out to the people we knew from beforehand, like international companies that we sometimes toured with or were invited to. And then more and more, all these theater came into place and sometimes not only supporting productionally, but also supporting an actors reaching out. But there was also a lot of trust there because for this project, I sometimes worked with actors I never met physically before, never worked before. So yeah, that was this... Hilarious adventure, really. But it suited again on all these levels, the form and the content of the play itself to take this risk. I think it always went hand in hand, I could say.

[00:12:12.577] Kent Bye: Yeah. So let's talk a little bit about the distribution aspect because you had these 10 theater companies and their website and their ticketing and all the ways that you buy tickets. And so in some ways you were able to make it feel like you were going to a theater show and going through all the normal process that you would there. But at the same time, you're having these 10 different theaters spread out across different regions. So maybe you could talk about how you actually got this out through collaborating with these different theater troops.

[00:12:40.560] Alexander Devriendt: Well, I think the core of the TM, and now we're moving into spoiler zone. So yeah, don't watch, just come if you hear this. But it was like, we're supposedly so connected, but we feel disconnected. And in Corona, that was even a bit more extreme. So for me, making this connections as an audience member was also, if you would come to the show, I would love it. Like you're from America, right? Where are you based?

[00:13:08.296] Kent Bye: Portland, Oregon. Yeah.

[00:13:09.881] Alexander Devriendt: So I think it would be a pity if you would come to this show and maybe meet also Americans and then see other Americans, maybe people you know, because then trying to make a connection in this world would seem like a little bit of the bubble, which I was trying to break with this project. Like, how do you get outside of your own bubble? So I was forcing the idea that you would meet somebody from Helsinki, from Belgium, maybe from Singapore, something like that. If time zones allowed, of course, but if you play all day, you can find a way to it. So what we taught immediately is instead of selling it as a sort of website on our own, let's use the classical way of touring. Like you go normally as a theater group to a theater, And they sell their tickets and they reach their audiences. But if we do that at the same time, maybe we have a sort of waiting room, we can talk about later, where you meet these 10 different people from all over the world at the same time. But it also felt strange because the only thing we were using of the theater was... their channel, you could say, not traveling, not their physical space, but of course the beauty that there's still their audiences there. And even though in this big internet or this seemingly you can go anywhere, I love it that we also think locally. And I was trying to use that or make of that weakness, you could say, the global, as opposed to the local, a little bit of strength.

[00:14:36.635] Kent Bye: Yeah, onboarding and offboarding was interesting because the instructions were show up and don't bring anybody. This is just for you. So when I go into what is essentially kind of like this customized teleconference platform using the OEA that DocLab has actually been using at a number of different festivals that this was a customized version of that. I saw other people and I just assumed that they were like the actors that were part of it. And then we all mutually discovered at some point in talking that no, actually we're all here to see, and we have no idea what's going on. But then at the end, after we go through this immersive experience, you have little circles down at the bottom where you can see other people. And what I think is interesting about immersive experiences like this is that you all just went through a shared context. And you kind of want to unpack it as to like, okay, what did I go through? What did other people experience? And then how does that reflect your character and who you are? And there was a bunch of strangers just had this shared experience and now they can connect to each other in this context. And so I think that if the goal of this was to also create that moment, I thought what a brilliant way to put people through a very personalized experience, but then allow them to connect to others about what they just went through. And there's a sense-making process that I think everybody was going through in terms of you know, okay, what did you get and trying to say, okay, well, this is what everybody went through. And this is what maybe was unique to me. And there's a little bit of that, you know, trying to figure out that, but it was overall this context to connect to these other audience members.

[00:16:05.223] Alexander Devriendt: I'm glad what you're saying, because that was indeed the intense. And in a way, I think first I was thinking, okay, when you come to see a show, normally you're waiting in the theater, like the auditorium is still lit and nothing happening is still on stage. And maybe you talk with somebody in the corridor or maybe something next to you, but at least you feel their presence. So for me, it was first having that experience. And also I, I'm playing through the window of your PC or your laptop, which is basically the one you're sitting out behind the whole day. So I was also trying to like, how can I control this environment without forcing you to do anything else? And we worked a lot together with Oupion to make this customized version. So it was about trying to control this environment to make it theatrical. And in a way also sometimes reflecting on the normal situation in a normal theater. What we used in experience, because I did one-on-one shows in the past, not virtually, but physically. And we always talked about the concept of a decompression room. Like whether you're outside of the wheelchair and take your blindfold off or to other shows, which are a bit more complicated, but we always felt the need to not go immediately into the real world. Like having this in between, which is basically giving an applause and leaving the theater, maybe waiting a little bit at the bar, that kind of feel. Because I would have hated if after the interview, you can immediately check your emails because you're basically on the same spot. It's like you've seen it play and you immediately go to your phone. Like, how could I prevent that? That you feel this need or this feeling of like... There's this little in between. And that's why we invited people to meet. We make sure that you meet a little bit each other, maybe seen each other during the performance. Sometimes people waited for each other. There's also a gift shop or stuff to make you linger there. So at least we hope that at a certain point, the conversation gets going. And also not forcing, like the little balls were a typical Oye thing, I think, and also are a little bit less intruding and more inviting to people. If you don't want to engage, you're still there. But at the beginning of the show, I wanted you to have a little bit more like a waiting room Zoom environment that feels familiar. And in that way, slightly alters the typical Zoom experience that you have. But it was a balance. It was sometimes giving up control. And sometimes trying to gain control where it sometimes seems impossible to have it. Because if you've seen Artificial at ITFA, like I couldn't control so much. Like you could control the way you walk there. The orange light was beaming you in and you were sitting at the computer that I can completely control and none of your personal stuff is there. So here it was a completely different experience. And a hard one as a theater maker, I have to say. Because I'm a bit of a control freak, I should say. So this project was challenging in many different ways, not only for the audience, but also how to work with actors, working with people you never know before. So, yeah.

[00:19:09.161] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, I was going to ask about the artificial piece that was at DocLab because I feel like there was a lot of parallels there in terms of like I could see like almost an evolution of what I saw, which was sort of like going through a Turing test. And you as a human are going through all these different tests to kind of prove your humanity. But yet it's really about reflecting on your humanity. And I know we had a chance to kind of unpack it and talk about it. So from that experience, then this seems to be a one-on-one interaction and you're kind of getting interviewed, but at the same time, you're interrogating a lot of the similar questions in terms of good and evil and what's it mean to be human. And so, yeah, maybe you could talk about that evolution from what you took away from that piece, artificial life that you did at doc lab back in 2019, and then how that fed into what you're doing here, which was rather than interacting with a computer and being asked questions, you're actually having a one-on-one interrogation.

[00:20:02.108] Alexander Devriendt: I'm glad you call it an evolution because you could also see it's a completely different play and I was glad ITFA and National Theatre saw it as well because I think during lockdown I was still working a little bit on artificial but I felt the time changed so much that I felt it's not the time and place to talk about this not what people care about now it feels like there's other needs and for me getting outside of your bubble and Maybe in the lack of seeing other humans, it was a different kind of what makes me human or what makes me me or feeling disconnected from the rest of humanity. Because I had it, like I saw my wife and maybe one or two friends that I walked with. But when I connected with the rest of the world, it was through media. So I was reading a lot of QAnon supporters, capital stormers, Brexit voters. So it felt like, wait a minute, what does it mean to be me? Am I the only one left to things normally? Like, of course not, but still. I was missing the feeling of sitting in a bus and sitting with people I don't know and can share a world with. It seemed like the people I was reading about didn't inhabit the same world as me. So that was for me what it means to be human was of course an artificial as opposed to a non-existent human being. But I always like it if you talk from when you miss something or when you take something away, you can start to question who you are. So in relationship to a robot or to an animal, you can define what human is. But it feels I was missing other humans to define what human is. Because I am me because I see other humans. So for me, that felt like the natural evolution, if that makes sense. And also just completely changing the course of this project. But yeah, I was just glad because it was really made as a sort of intuitive decision and more as an organic next step. I remember I was going to talk with Kasper and Toby, Kasper from Mitra and Toby from National Theater. And I was like, they're never going to see the similarity in this project because it's basically just a completely different setup. But it immediately clicked. It immediately felt like, as you said, as a sort of logical next step, which also means that... The difficulty of making something about artificial intelligence for me when I made artificial is it's so quickly becomes about artificial intelligence, but that's difficult because I don't want to make a show about a technological thing. It's like, Imagine that at the dawn of the internet somebody asks you to make a show about the internet. You don't make a show about the internet. That's just a concept that maybe can be used for something, but at the core that cannot be the content of your show or what you want to say as an artist. It's just a means to talk about something else and always in the essence what it means to be human, of course, I think.

[00:22:54.434] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, I really appreciated that. And I've been in these Clubhouse chats with Noah Nelson from No Presidium, and we just had a discussion with actors from Then She Fell and Soup No More and The Under Presents, which were all pieces that had immersive theater, but they had these one-on-one elements. And Third Rail projects I did, Then She Fell, would call these specific moments of one-on-one the glance back, which is you have the audience member and you're able to really either lock eyes or in that moment, that audience member feels seen. And I think that what you're able to achieve in this piece is to really take that concept and do a real deep dive. Like I don't, know if I've had another theater experience where I've been as seen or had as many opportunities to reflect upon even my own identity of who I conceive of who I am. And so I'm wondering if you could unpack that a little bit in terms of how you were architecting this experience to not only dig into someone's own story of who they are, but have these moments where people could have the opportunity to really be seen in this experience.

[00:24:03.211] Alexander Devriendt: I think a lot of it comes from the experience of making these one-on-one shows in the past. You kind of grow into it in the beginning when I just had this idea, like we were young and we're just experimenting in form. And we were just thinking like, well, let's change all the rules about theater. So normally you were 200. What if you're alone? Normally you can see. What if we put a blindfold on? Normally you can clap your hands. So what if you're blindfolded? Normally you're e-mobile. Let's make you mobile. So in the beginning, it's just a sort of messing around with form. And that was the first step, the one I talked about, the smile of your face where you're then blindfolded in a wheelchair. And I remember we were experimenting and doing stuff. In the beginning, we did way too much. And one of the scenes that you encountered, which most of you, you didn't see anything, but we made you fall onto a bed and talk to a stranger. And that was, for me, one of the first theater experiences we created where there's a stranger talking to an audience member and asking different kinds of questions. I think I did that talk for like around 10,000 people, like even more, I think, but like having this conversation and it was always interesting and it was always fascinating, even though it felt like sometimes you do 60 people a day and you're having this conversation over and over and over again. It was also mind-blowing what people revealed. And it was also so interesting to get to know people. So I don't know. And some people even said like, is it therapeutic? Is it theater? What is it really? Is it really a normal? And I say, I don't care. It's an experience. For me, it's theatrical experience. It's not meant as a therapeutic session to help you. It's just using the situation to learn something. And I think we took that experience through all of our work. And I even tried to take that one-on-one experience when you would see a normal end-on show of me. Because like I said, sometimes I do one-on-one shows, sometimes end-on. But I always take this, when you are sitting there in the audience, it matters that you're there. It matters. And I don't say this lightly, of course, but there's always an active invitation that I don't want you to, what you normally do is you identify with somebody on stage and you kind of zone out. That's what we do with a good, normal blockbuster movie. You zone out, maybe identify a little bit and go out. But I always invite you to keep on living, to keep on being who you are, even though it's not an escapism, life just goes on. but maybe as a mirror of real life, but I always use you. And I can go on and on, sorry. And I also tried to take away the thing that you have to believe something. Like for instance, the person who interviewed you, I always use the concept of possible reality. Like if the person in front of you feels truthful, it has to be because otherwise you're not going to answer truthfully. But if it's too casual, it's too real. So it has to have some theatrical element to give you some sort of experience and a mirror to real life. Because if it's just real life, where's the theater then? And where's the reflection on real life? So it's mixing these elements that we're all taking with us in this project as well.

[00:27:16.803] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, as we're well into the spoiler area, you've kind of created a cult. And the feat is that you're being interviewed for this cult. And at some point you realize what this entity is and the overall structure of that. But you're able to have these series of questions And you have like a manifesto with like these 11 points that you're using as the principles that are kind of driving a lot of the different themes that you're exploring. And so I guess the first question is what's your creative process and distilling down these 11 manifesto principles, or if you choose a certain topic that you want to like explore, and then from there. You say, okay, well, if we really want to explore this specific area, then here's the larger principle that we're going to dive into. Like, this is what you really believe as a principle that then from there gets engineered into this overall experience. But where do you begin in something like this as you're creating a cult and creating these different principles and where do you start with how to cultivate what in the end is this experience that you're trying to give the audience member, but then what are the steps that you took in order to architect this whole structure?

[00:28:20.725] Alexander Devriendt: It's a long process, of course. This was also continuation of sometimes previous projects, but I'll try to answer succinctly. So when I had the idea for a worldwide organization at the core of the project, that you are probably more connected to people than you think you are. I was immediately thinking of these Scientology groups, action groups, also terrorist groups, you could say, whether they're Extinction Rebellion or whether that's ISIS. So I was using a lot of the language and the issues they were raising. And basically I was just, I'm going to raise a cult myself. But of course, you use their techniques, but for a completely different end. Because I love it that when somebody tries to sell me something, even if somebody on the street is like, oh, can I ask you something? I'm always a bit suspicious, like, oh, you're going to want my money or something like that. But the core of the show was that, that suspicion that we naturally have. and that's maybe seldomly needed and true, was the one I wanted to question. So for me, using these techniques of like, wait a minute, what is this? Are they trying to sell me something? This doesn't feel right, was exactly the feeling I was going for, to then turn it around, of course, when you get to know what the cult or what the group is really about. So that's why I like it that people don't know, because for me, being there and in the beginning, I... I think there's an introduction of a person, then the testimonials from people saying how this being part of TM has changed their life. Like a lot of alarm bells that go, you're like, oh, wait a minute. This is a group I don't want to be part of. Like, that's the thing. But for me, that transition from not wanting and feeling suspicion going is, of course, also the core of the show for me. It's also... I'll be honest, when I see a darker man running on the street here, I don't think, oh, he's missing the bus, or I don't know yet, he's late home. Yeah, I have to fight against a certain xenophobia that doesn't feel right always, but it's still your first reaction. When I see, I don't know, somebody's door open, I think somebody's going to break in. It's just human nature to think maybe the negative. And then going from there, having this interview, whether it's somebody on the street from The International or going into a Scientology church, you always have these questionnaires. And for instance, with Scientology, you have this horrible questionnaire of 200 questions. I did it a couple of times just to get to know a little bit. And at the end, when you get the result, it always shows some positive things and then mostly negative things that, of course, you need the Church of Scientology to help you through. So this principle of a questionnaire was the first thing that drove us. But then the questions itself is mainly I wanted to challenge my own worldview with these questions. Like I was asking us in the group questions to ourselves that forced you to rethink a little bit what you think of the world. also acknowledge a little bit. I get to know, okay, this is what I'm standing for. This is what I think. Like simple questions. Do you believe the world could be a better place or not? Like getting a sort of assessment of who's in front of you. But then at the end, also questions that really challenge my own worldview. Because for instance, and again, we're in spoiler territory. But for me, the absurdity that most people on a scale, so at a certain point, there's a scale from zero to 20 and zero being evil and 20 being perfectly good. Of course, a completely subjective scale that there's no basis around it. But for me, the subjectivity is part of it. And I invite you to ask where you would put yourself. And then where you would put yourself 10 years ago or maybe as a teenager or maybe as a newborn child. And I just think it's fascinating that myself and everybody, we still think that children are 20 and by life you go down to 14, 12. If you're positive, maybe a 16. But it's so strange that this Adam and Eve complex is still there. I don't know. Do we need this? In order to be good, do you need to feel bad about yourself? Is this necessary? And that's, for instance, one aspect of the show. But for me, it's questioning in the core what I believe. Does it mean to be human to feel bad about yourself? Or is it necessary? I don't have an answer for that, but these questions were over and over. I'm of course focusing on one aspect of the show. There's many different where we had this sort of journey. Sorry, I'm not answering the question anymore. I'm just rambling a little bit, but that also happens when you try to distill a rehearsal process. How do you come up to it? Because of course all these things were happening at the same time. And also a lot of testing on ourselves, on each other. And also looking for an interesting theatrical experience. Like if it's only questions in the same room, I also want to create situations where I invite you to imagine this place to be a different place, whether your eyes close or your eyes open. It was also about finding the theater in there.

[00:33:33.598] Kent Bye: Yeah, well, just to kind of elaborate on one of the points that you made there in terms of asking a series of questions, rating yourself on the scale of how good or evil you are, and then what a baby is. And I also answered that, okay, a baby's like 20. And then, you know, over time you get corrupted or it's hard to be perfect as a human. And so it's just like the natural, but we do think of babies as more pure or whatnot. But there's a way in which you are able to take a concept like that, and maybe this is a widely held belief, but then really interrogate it and through this sort of questioning. And so I guess a question I had after going through this was, are there branches where if people kind of land on a certain area, you go a different trajectory because you're trying to react to where people are at, but yet you don't want to force them down a certain path. And so you're trying to evoke some of these feelings, but if someone says, oh, a baby's a zero, Okay, well then what happens then is that then set it down a different track of like, oh, well, that's interesting. And then in the moment have this sort of Socratic dialogue that then also kind of interrogates coming back to these larger principles. And so I guess I'm curious of like, if there were those branching points and then how you work with these actors to be able to navigate what could end up being a pretty wide range of different ways to directly respond to what's emerging, but with a larger intention towards trying to evoke a certain feeling in the audience.

[00:34:56.571] Alexander Devriendt: But the beauty is like in the end, every text or every scene or every piece of visual element that you see, whether it's in a movie or in a theater, evokes a feeling or should evoke a feeling, or that's the intent of the artist. And whether that's a story, whether that's a prince in Denmark trying to commit suicide, or whether that's a question, where would you put yourself as a baby? And it's also an invitation to think. It's just a little probe to more directly make you think. But for me, it's always an invitation. You're never forced into a certain area. Because at a certain point, I even ask you to mentally imagine something. Some people say they don't want to, they don't have to. There's no way that I would ever force the visitor. It's always an invitation. Because I think that's the difficult thing about interactive theater is that you need to do something in order to get an experience. Then I think you're missing the point of the beauty of what an interaction can do. The beauty of an interaction is that it feels customized for you, but you still get an artistic expression that you bought a ticket for. but it feels more customized for you. But also it feels like the actor or the maker is taking you on a journey by hand and inviting you to think about things. But of course, the beauty with the one-on-one experience that I can customize or I can adapt to how you react, or I can... Literally, there's a lot of different scenarios that we prepared. Like if you answer this to this, then there's documents that say, what if that, what if that? And we're still building on it. Like a lot of things happened, whether it's technically, artistically or content wise, or like we have this document also called challenging audiences. Like for me, there is no difficult audience, but there's always a possibility to adapt. And I think the script is like five pages long of the interview, but the what if script is like 20. So for me, that is really essential that the actor feels like he can give this customized experience and still rely on a well-taught true artistic expression, you could say. So that's the first thing that I think, or an essential thing that I think makes you feel like it's customized, but also doesn't give you the feeling like, oh my God, they're dependent on me doing things in order to get an interesting show. For me, it's sometimes beautiful that you don't have to answer certain questions. Just think about their answers in your mind, because that's essentially a story. I tell you a story and I don't ask you how you feel about that story. I just give you the story. And in this case, it's a little bit more, the questions, of course, it's a bit more direct, you could say. I was also thinking about the previous thing with the manifesto that you said. What was so scary about the manifesto for me is like, I never made a show where I so explicitly say what the show is about for me. And in this one, when I was creating a group that I believe in and I'm a founder of, I took the fiction almost real, like, okay, if I'm creating a group, I have to create a manifesto. Like that's the foundation of what your group is based on. Like normally when you make a show, you have a point or you have a message and you hide the message for yourself. You leave it to the audience too. But this one felt like the first time that I was like, let's just take the risk of writing a manifesto. And then it was really important also to have rule number nine in there. like sometimes i doubt whether this is all true as a sort of way out but also as a true vulnerability of the manifesto itself but that's too much into detail sorry the number nine being we don't have to like each other we may not that's another sorry no it's the one where i mean what which number is it what i say we sometimes doubt if these statements are true is that number 10 then

[00:38:41.072] Kent Bye: Yeah, we all worry if these statements are true. We don't always dare to believe them. We have doubts.

[00:38:45.454] Alexander Devriendt: Yeah, that was immediately also inherently there. As an artist, you have a message, but you also doubt your message and you should also leave it to the audience to create their own story. Not forcing them, but inviting them to maybe believe with you or don't. But it's not necessary. Your cooperation is not necessary in that sense. Because although, of course, I'm in a left bubble, you could say, a theater bubble, left thinking, maybe some socialist. Compared to America, I'm definitely a diehard socialist, you could say. But I mean, I believe in healthcare and in supporting people who are out of job and in the arts. But I want somebody who really believes in Trump and fears the left ones also to have a meaningful experience. Of course, it will be a bit harder to get them into my show. Because I'm not using the same channels. But in the end, we all fear each other. I fear the Trump supporter as much as he fears the socialist European. And for me, both of these people I want to talk to. So you also want to make sure that your message can reach through them. And that's why I was working with so many different nationalities. Like I worked with Russians in the same project as this one, as people from Singapore and people from America. Like, how do you bring them together? Where do you find the connection literally? So writing this manifesto was also for me, I want these actors to want to recruit. Of course, it's a fiction, they're acting and they're playing. But I loved it that sometimes when I said to them, you're also going to recruit, that the fiction and reality was a little bit intertwined, you could say.

[00:40:21.667] Kent Bye: Well, it was interesting to hear that Scientology has a questionnaire. I wasn't aware that they had that, but as you go through it, it's architected in a way to give you answers that make you feel worse about yourself And I feel like this experience was designed to make you feel better about yourself because you're self-evaluating on yourself on a scale from zero to 20 of how good you are. I think I called myself a 12. And then by the end, they're like, well, we've established what your score is. Your score is actually 18. So you have this experience of like, oh, wow, I'm better. But then there's also this doubt of like, am I really that good? But I think everybody that at least was in my theater bubbles also all got scores that were better And I'm wondering if like everybody gets a score that's better or what if people go through this experience and like somebody who is trying to be disruptive or zero. And then if you break people out into different groups at the end to be like, okay, here's two people who got in, here's two people who didn't get in and here's the experience that they have. And if you've created the situation where, cause at the end you want to sort of be in a bubble where everybody has a similar type of experience. And I felt like the people I was with kind of had that. similarity of that experience. And if you're able to be like, oh, well, actually you're not ready for this. You're not willing to live into all these different principles. You want to give people a shared experience and make them feel good about themselves. But at the same time, you don't want to have somebody who is disruptive, then get into this area and then be disruptive and ruin the group experience for other people as well. So I'm not sure if you had contingency plans for that, but just curious how you dealt with some of that.

[00:41:52.895] Alexander Devriendt: But for me, being disruptive doesn't make you less than an 18. It makes you irritating, and it makes me not like you, maybe, because you're just bothersome. But the risk that you're not a good human being, that's, of course, the premise of the show, that the risk that we're wrong about you is smaller than winning the lottery. For instance, there's a couple of questions that really are necessary to see if you're part of TM. And one of them is the fourth question, have you ever killed someone? So if you answered yes to that question, it's a bit troublesome to be part of TM, right? But okay. So immediately in rehearsals, people were talking, well, they say yes. Okay. So that if you would answer yes, I'm just going to go really, how do you say that? Itty nitty, nitty bitty. There's a word expression for it. Into the weeds. Yeah. So really analyzing. So the first thing is like, if somebody says yes, it's up to the actor to feel comfortable Are they being truthful or are they trying to provoke you? So if you feel that they're trying to provoke you, the question is there to say, are you trying to provoke me? Because the question before that is, are you going to try to answer my questions honestly? And then have you ever killed someone? Because it's already the fourth question or the fifth, you're not guarded enough because you're like, no, of course not. But if you are, maybe because you've read it in an interview or something like that. So first is the option is, are you trying to provoke me? Because if you lie on this question, it doesn't make you not a member. It just makes you somebody who's trying to be provocative. But that doesn't make you a bad human being. Like, makes me not like you, or that's why number eight we talked about, we may not like each other. Maybe, but even then, I don't mind being disruptive. I think it's good to be disruptive and resist sometimes the paths you take. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But okay, what if it's a true yes? The question that you can then ask as an actor is, does it involve a medical or an accident? Because some people see maybe having an abortion as killing somebody. Does that make them a bad human being? Some people disagree. A lot of people disagree. I think some people like, no, it makes you a bad human being, but still it's a subjective scale. An accident, did you do it on purpose or not? Does that make you a bad human being? Like all these possibilities are there. And then I know some of the actors were like, yeah, but soldiers, what about soldiers? We've had three soldiers in the show. None of them have ever killed someone because most soldiers don't. Most soldiers are doing, I don't know, administer jobs sometimes and barely touch the weapon. I had one person who was in Iraq, somebody I knew, I had conversations with. He never killed someone, but he's the typical idea of a soldier. So even our idea of a soldier is somebody who kills somebody else. And that's, for me, the beauty about it. A part of it was based on Rudolf Brecht's Humankind, a book. He says that when you analyze what soldiers did, even in world wars, they deliberately sometimes shoot in the sky because they didn't want to hit somebody. So again, our typical idea of somebody who kills somebody is so overly accentuated that this group, of course not everybody is part of this group, but for me it's about do we need to fear the Trump supporters, the capital stormers, or do we maybe only need to fear some capital stormers and Trump himself? Shouldn't we focus more on the real problem instead of the people following them? That's why I mean with sometimes fear is a distraction. I think there's other issues that ask our more immediate attention, like climate change or inequality. And sometimes fearing other members kind of distracts us both from the real problem. Like inequality is a problem for left and right, right? But why do we fear the other side? And that's for me a little bit to show. like a broker from Wall Street, can he be part of TM? I don't know, because my cliche image of a broker of Wall Street is a really bad human being. Or maybe at a certain point I ask you, what about CEOs? Most people say CEOs are worse than nurses, for instance. But CEOs are just like, I don't know, CEO of this flower company or the one who made this for my daughter to drink of is probably an okay human being. But still, our idea of CEO is better. And then I ask CEOs of big oil companies, for instance, but there's only four of them in the world. And yes, they probably won't be part of TM for me. But that's four people or six, I don't know. But there's not a lot of oil companies and people who are deliberately destroying the world to make profit, I think. But they steal the attention.

[00:46:35.388] Kent Bye: So it is possible to not get in through this show? What happens if you don't get in?

[00:46:40.490] Alexander Devriendt: Then we still take the risk. Because that's indeed, for me, we still believe more that you're lying here and that you're trying to be disruptive than we really believe you're not a member. But there's scenarios that haven't been used yet because there is scenarios where we ask you not to join. We haven't had to use them yet. I think we only played for 2000 people now. So I'll keep you posted. Okay.

[00:47:06.001] Kent Bye: Well, as we start to wrap up here, you know, I often ask people like the ultimate potential of these types of media. So in this case, you're doing it an immersive and interactive theatrical performance. And so what do you think the ultimate potential of this type of immersive entertainment might be and what it might be able to enable?

[00:47:25.020] Alexander Devriendt: I'm curious, a lot of people think, and a lot of people ask on many different levels of the world, how are we going to change after this corona? How is the world going to change? And in different types of mediums, like in our job or in our world, how's theater going to change? How's everything going to change? And for me, this project would never happen without the lockdown or without the need for it. It's indeed a sort of crisis that always pushes some boundaries, you could say, or makes things possible. But at the same time, I'm also a bit, it's for me difficult when you use a new medium. Like for instance, holograms. At a certain point, holograms are an issue and they're a technical thing. What are the beautiful things you can do with it? And then we all remember that concert about Tupac Shakur and it was a hologram. And I was like, yeah, but nobody talked about the music. And for me, the essence is still the music, whether it's a hologram or whatever. So for me, the medium is never the point. And that's why I loved doing the show because the medium, the video meeting or the conversation with somebody at the other side of the world is not the new thing. It almost feels like, yeah, I'm used to this and I'm just altering it maybe to put it to the extreme. Like maybe talk with somebody you've never met before on the other side of the world instead of the people you normally Zoom with. But the essence of the medium is still familiar because otherwise it's a gimmick. Otherwise it's about a new thing. So for me, a new technological thing should feel familiar enough because I want to talk about humanity or what makes you or the real issues or profound questions. And technology is only a means for it. So I think with this lockdown or this thing, some boundaries or some things were sped up, you could say. But I was watching, for instance, this conversation between Harari and Daniel Kahneman. And he was just simply saying a year ago, it would have been absurd not to fly me over. And nobody would really accept that we are doing this online conversation, but now it just feels normal. And I think that's what happens. It just sped up some sort of new normal, which I think is just, I don't know. I'm curious because I feel that there's a lot of possibilities indeed. There's also going to be a sort of going back to the physical. I think there's also going to be sort of a wave of going back and maybe theater is going to become more classical than it was before lockdown because people are like, oh yes, let's go back. But you can't erase, of course, the new normal that we all accept. So somewhere in between, I think what TM is now doing, But yeah, my mind is like, oh, there's a couple of doors opened that I'm curious to peek through.

[00:50:18.842] Kent Bye: Is there anything else that's left unsaid that you'd like to say to the broader immersive community?

[00:50:22.804] Alexander Devriendt: I have no idea. I don't know. I'm always curious when I met, when I was in ITFA, I met this community for the first time, you could say. But for me, it's a strange world because I always think like you want to tell something and then you look for the best means possible. And that sometimes is a classical normal end on show. Sometimes that's a movie. Sometimes that's a book. I tend to feel like the medium you're most familiar with, but it can always be different. And so I'm curious in this community is how much, sorry, I don't know what I'm saying. Can I answer it again? Can I answer it again? What would I want to say?

[00:51:06.531] Kent Bye: Sorry, I have no idea. Well, I'm going to take on what you said there just to pick up because for each medium, I feel like there's certain affordances. Like if you want to write a book that really gets into someone's mental world, that's just their thoughts, their whole experience. Like maybe a book and a novel is a lot better than say a movie that ends up having like a different affordances of, having the world that you're seeing and the interaction of the characters, but then an immersive VR experience may be much more about the personal direct phenomenological experience. So it's much about your embodied experience or, you know, with the film, you're able to control the time-based medium of the timing and the music that is able to cultivate a certain emotion. But theater in some ways is kind of the embodied, it's like it's live, it's happening in the moment. It's a shared experience in that sense. And then as we do this one-on-one stuff, it's sort of different. So I feel like that each of these media have different affordances and depending on what you're trying to say, you're going to be able to say that same thing in each of the different media, but in some media, it'll work better than others. And so I think as a theater maker, you're, what I see your work at least is that you're really exploring this immersive interactive being seen and creating these interactions that are one-on-one and what's the essence of that? Because we're moving away from passive consumption into this interactivity and this participation. And what's that participation mean in terms of how much of a deeper experience that you can get? And so in this experience, my takeaway is that there was something about the way that I was able to either express my identity or have my identity reflected back to me in a way that actually was provocative and challenging my own concept of the stories that I have about my identity. Can you really do that in a film? I don't know. I think there's something about this script and then the what-if scenarios that you're able to kind of have different experiences that we're able to kind of explore that we haven't had before we have this really interactive or participatory medium. So as I hear you talk about what each of these media meaning and what I see at least from the heart of these interactive and participatory media.

[00:53:09.960] Alexander Devriendt: And it's also, it's true what you say, because I like video games a lot. Yeah. But even where you go into the story and you feel immersed in the story, I think something like The Last of Us is maybe the best possible, where you follow a certain path and still it feels like meaningful and the choices you've made. But of course, the most interesting ones are where you meet other human beings and you have this interaction, like whether it's in Overwatch or in Hearthstone or whatever, like that's why all these multiplayer games are so good because it's much more interesting to have a sort of opponent who is as chaotic as you are or as unpredictable or predictable as you are. Maybe artificial can sometimes pretend that, but still the feeling that somebody else is on the other side of the screen is this contact, whether you believe it or not, or whether it's truthful or not, is for me more meaningful experience that just uses the means of the game to have this communication. I was just playing a game of Hearthstone and I felt there was another human being there, much more interesting for me than playing against an AI right now. And that's where the conversation for me is happening. And the point of the video game is of course to entertain me, but seldomly trying to challenge my worldview. Because in the end, I think that what's defined entertainment from art is whatever type of medium you do, if it's invitation to challenge your worldview, I think that's where it becomes interesting and where, yeah. I would say if art is not challenging, why bother? And it's not meant to please you, Although TM, of course, is in that way also challenging that view, because it's meant to please you a little bit, because maybe that's what you need more now, or we all need more now, some comforting instead of some provoking. But it's interesting to see the possibilities indeed, because immersive is for me, theatre has always been immersive. I never saw a difference in that. But there's a danger of using the immersion in the sort of pre-planned scenario where it doesn't really matter that I'm there, because then it pretends to be immersive. And that pretend thing is easily spotted by audiences, I think.

[00:55:14.349] Kent Bye: Yeah, yeah, it's definitely an issue that comes up a lot with the no proscenium and how they define immersive and everything immersive because there is this difference between audience participation and interactivity and immersion. You know, there's all these different dimensions here, but I think that what you're able to achieve here is that real great mix of making it feel immersive. interactive and you are participating, but it also has that deeper meaning. So yeah, I'm glad I had a chance to be able to catch up with you and unpack my experience a little bit more. Cause it's one of those things that I think will give me a lot of deep insights, but yet it's a type of experience. It's also really hard to get into like only 2000 people have got to see it. And then if it does have other runs, then it may be hard for people to actually have a chance to see it. But I think it's the type of provocations that you have here and insights that that I think hopefully through this conversation, other people will be able to kind of learn from, and even if they don't have a chance to do it. And hopefully if you did get a chance to see it and come back to listen to this, you're able to kind of unpack your own experience of this kind of shared experience that you're creating for people. So anyway, Alexander, just thanks for creating this and for joining me here on the podcast to be able to unpack it a little bit more.

[00:56:18.529] Alexander Devriendt: Thank you, Kent, for the invitation to think and talk with you. It's always good to put things into words where you can grasp them a little bit more. So thanks for the opportunity.

[00:56:28.248] Kent Bye: So that was Alexander Devrent. He's the artistic director for Entroon Entroont. That is the most difficult thing to say. I am going to play this little audio for how it's said by Google Translate. Kasper Sonnen. I could just hear you laughing right now, making fun of how I pronounce this impossibly to pronounce the Dutch name. So a number of different takeaways about this interview is that, first of all, so this was an experience that really stuck with me. And, you know, it's something that I have thought about a number of different times. And, you know, as I am digging back into my backlog, I just wanted to see if I could publish this and still have enough context. It's one of those things where you kind of have to go through the experience to really get all the different dimensions, but hopefully by reading through the manifesto at the top, and you can look at the show notes to be able to look at that again, it's probably worth just reading through again, just to recontextualize all the different themes that this experiences exploring and so again this is a manifesto that was explicit for some of the messages that was being communicated through this kind of like socratic dialogue where you're being interrogated you're being interviewed and that there's kind of like a branching path for the interviewees that depending on how you answer they may have these different what-if scenarios so they have like a basic outline of a script but then like a 20-page what-if script and so when I did it, it just felt like a really fluid conversation, but it was actually like really reflecting with what I was saying, what I was responding. I really felt reflected and heard in a way that I don't often experience, especially when it's kind of like a theatrical conversation. And what I see as this underlying method of the Socratic dialogue that Agnes Callard has so brilliantly detailed in her book called Open Socrates. And a couple of episodes ago, we start to dive into this kind of Socratic immersive experience. This was One of the experiences that I was really thinking about in terms of the types of immersive theater that is deploying this type of Socratic immersive experience methods. So there's one-on-one dialectic that is being used. And so I'm just going to read through the manifesto because I think that helps to kind of flesh out the gist of this experience and what they were really trying to explore here. So number one, on a scale of one to 20, we are all good people. We're better than we think we are. So again, as we're going through the experience, you're kind of rating yourself, you're rating other people, and you're kind of reflecting upon these ratings of yourself. Number two, we do not kill. We are reluctant to commit evil. And again, if you answer in this way that if you did kill someone, then the person who's a questioner says that, you know, oh, you're just being provocative and that overall, everyone's going to be joining this cult. Number eight is the possibility that we are wrong about you, that you are not a member, is smaller than winning the lottery. So in essence, everybody that is a part of this experience is becoming a member of this cult, at least up to the first 2,000 that they didn't have any that they were rejecting. But that is a part of the script that that is a possibility as well. So I'm not sure at the end of it if anyone was actually rejected from this experience. So back to number three. We can imagine being dangerous. We know what violence looks like, but we choose not to use violence as an option. By the way, just as I'm reading through all this, this is so cool that he created this manifesto as something that he really wanted to live into. And so if he were to create this cult, these are all the different principles that he would want to try to live by. Number four, fearing other members is a waste of time. It distracts us. So I think as we go back to what happens if you were to enter in someone who has killed somebody, they're trying to like explore different aspects of fear and good and evil. These different dialectics that are being explored throughout the course of this experience as well. So number five, we know that evil is strong, loud, and exceptional. We know that good is ordinary, typical, the usual. Number six, we are aware that we base our opinion more on emotions than on facts. We are manipulatable, but in the end, we try to return to reason. Number seven, we are masters of imagination. We create the most beautiful and the most horrible stories. That is our weakness and our strength. And again, number eight was the possibility that we're wrong. that you are not a member is smaller than winning a lottery. Number nine, we don't have to like each other. We may not, but that's fine. We don't have to. Number 10, we all worry if these statements are true. We don't always dare to believe them. We have doubts. And number 11, we care for each other. We care for small triangles. We all try to make the world a better place. So that was kind of the gist of the experience. And the thing that I really took away and remember was having this really dynamic conversation. And I was thinking to myself, how did they like architect this? How did they put this together? So it's really curious to hear like the evolution of this, where that was a part of being blindfolded and having audiences that were sitting down and having these one-on-one conversations. And Because it was a pandemic and because there were all these actors that were out of work, they really designed this experience to have these really intimate one-on-one interactions. Whenever you go to like big immersive theater shows, there's the chance that you might have one of these one-on-one interactions. And then she fell, really architected the entire experience where you would have like a one-on-one interaction almost the entirety of the time. But they would have 15 people going through at the same time, but they would have roughly like a one-to-one ratio. Not exactly, but a one-to-one ratio where you would have actors that were giving these really intimate moments across all these different scenes. And third world projects would call that the glance back. And at the time of this conversation, Clubhouse was all the rage. It was during the pandemic. I was having all these different group conversations with Noah Presinium and Noah Nelson and having all these discussions around experience of design, immersive theater and XR and immersive storytelling in general. i've heard alexander say more recently at the latest if a doc lab 2024 where he's showing a couple experiences that he likes to create immersive theater for people who don't like immersive theater and so there's this interesting tension of that where they're very unique types of experiences that he's creating and he is creating these pathways where you don't actually have to respond that the show will still go on but he said in this interview that he was trying to challenge your own worldviews and rethink of what we think of the world and trying to find a theater in each moment is something that he said again and again. And so even in these one-on-one interactions and ways that he's architecting and scripting it and having to train all these different actors who are having these different conversations is really quite a unique experience. And something that I thought many, many times is that how immersive theater is really this kind of intersection between adding a theatrical elements of theater and how theater is usually constructed and adding the more immersive interactive participatory elements of all the different media that are out there i think immersive theater media is probably the closest to the exalted potential for where xr and immersive storytelling is going in the future this kind of like full potential of live action role play, I think is probably the highest potential of that. Just think about something like Westworld where you're having these different types of very specific one-on-one interactions where an actor can improv or have a rough outline of a script and make it feel really believable. I think, you know, the scalability of that is obviously not very feasible. And like this was during the pandemic, it was a very unique time. But generally, you're not going to have a lot of these different types of one-on-one immersive theater experiences. Although Craig Quintero is designing a number of these different one-on-one interactions over the years and is working with the Phi Gallery to have like a whole run of some of these different one-on-one experiences. So like the one-on-one encounter is something very unique within the context of the broader XR industry, just because there's so much momentum fighting against making it financially make sense. But as we look forward to having more and more AI agents, virtual beings, it could be that there are some elements of trying to flesh out what is the core experience of some of these different types of one-on-one interactions. And then maybe at some point, maybe AI will be able to do as well as a person. Now, all the different discussion and discourse around AI... My views on AI like 10 years ago for starting, it was a lot more curious to see where things are going. But I think that in some ways, AI has come to this point where it's like, how can these huge companies use AI to be able to cut out human labor and the human experience and make these kind of soulless types of experiences? So I'm kind of hesitant thinking around like, how is AI going to replace the liveness of the live of having a real meaningful interaction? I'm actually a little bit more skeptical that AI is going to be able to live up to having just like a one-on-one conversation with another person. Although realistically, it's going to get to that point where AI is going to start to have these different types of Socratic immersive experiences that human beings won't be able to facilitate just because of the financial implications of all of that. And we might start to see like more and more of these different types of Wizard of Oz-ing where people are jumping in and out of acting positions. And then maybe it's supplemented by these other AI agents and AI virtual beings that are interacting some of the different times, but not all of the time. And so I expect to see some of that as well. So it's an experience that I still think about. And as I just experienced some of the latest work from Trudeau and Hunt. some really innovative and exciting experimentations for this type of interactive and participatory and immersive theater. So that's all I have for today, and I just wanted to thank you for listening to the Wistful VR podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, then please do spread the word, tell your friends, and consider becoming a member of the Patreon. This is a listener-supported podcast, and so I do rely upon donations from people like yourself in order to continue to bring you this coverage. So you can become a member and donate today at patreon.com slash WistfulVR. Thanks for listening.

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