Touring 2000 years of theatre in virtual reality

IMAGINE being able to visit a theatre that was destroyed 2000 years ago.

Under a project being funded by the European Commission, the idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds.

The commission is spending £500000 sterling on creating three-dimensional, virtual reality copies of Europe's most historically important theatres which will be available in an Internet and visual compact disc package.

The leader of the project is Professor Richard Beacham, of the Theatre Studies department of the University of Warwick, in the English Midlands.

In some cases, Prof Beacham has had very little to base his highly accurate computer aided architectural reconstructions on. Just fragments of an original building or references from paintings or drawings on ancient artefacts have had to suffice when no other sources have existed.

The project goes far beyond simply producing aesthetically pleasing models of theatres. The selection of "virtual" theatres, packaged with visual compact disc and on-line user interfaces, will enable students, teachers and researchers to access a great deal of both graphic and textural material, illustrating and exploring the history, evolution, variety and current range of theatrical practice in Europe.

Users will be able to study such essential elements of theatre as time, space, acoustics, lighting and sightlines, which are difficult to convey in books alone.

The project brings together a number of European partners, including the University of Amsterdam, the Foundation of the Hellenic World in Athens, architects Atelier 4D in Berlin, United Kingdom multimedia company Theatron, Dutch multimedia company SPC training, the Architectural Heritage Division of the Council of Europe, and the Institute of Engineering of the University of Ferrara in Italy.

All the partners in the consortium will be trained to a sufficient level allowing them to continue to add further material to this valuable resource which will grow and expand long after the production of the initial visual compact disc.

Detailed reconstructions of a number of historically important theatres have already been put together. They include the theatres of Pompey and Pompeii, the Paris Opera; the Bayreuth Festspielhaus; the Teatro Olympico at Vicenza, Italy; the Hellerau Festspielhaus, near Dresden; the ancient Greek theatres of Messene and Dionysus; London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren; and Sir John Vanbrugh's Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket, London.