Theatre In L'Derry To Stage World First Performance Of Minecraft

A theatre in L'Derry is to stage a world first performance of a Minecraft Live action play.

The new play, Playcraft Live, is to take place at the Playhouse Theatre on Saturday, 14 October, both on stage at the Playhouse and broadcast to the world online.

It will be performed by both human actors on stage and their corresponding digital avatars in the world of Minecraft.

Playcraft Live is a collaboration between The Playhouse Theatre, world-renowned creative producer, Adam Clarke, digital educators, MakeMatic, and a diverse team of Minecraft personalities and artists. It is commissioned by The Space, which is funded by the BBC and Arts Council England.

Minecraft is the second-best-selling videogame of all time (behind Tetris). Designed by Swede Markus 'Notch' Persson, it enables players to build constructions out of textured cubes and take part in exploration, engineering, crafting and combat. As of February 2017, Minecraft had sold 121 million copies.

Playcraft Live intends to bring together some of the finest creative talents from theatre and gaming. Leading Minecraft artists and digital producers, Adam Clarke and MakeMatic, will work with set and costume designers at the Playhouse, to create virtual theatre sets within Minecraft.

The production will see the dramatisation of a script, written specifically for Playcraft by Alex Scarrow, the internationally successful author and creator of the popular Time Riders teen novels. The story sits between books one and two of the Time Riders series.

The play will be split between live performances by actors on stage and puppeteers controlling the actors within Minecraft. Slipping between both stage and game world, the story will unfold across different locations and time from within the story. Audiences within the theatre, and online, will experience the production as a single live-stream, and neither audience needs to own Minecraft in order to view the stream.

Select YouTubers will also be able to watch the production from within Minecraft, live during the performance, and to stream this live on their channels. Playcraft Live will also be available to view on YouTube after 14 October. All performances, viewings and events are free of charge.

Kieran Griffiths, Creative Director at the Playhouse Theatre, said: "We are excited to be introducing something completely new to the world of theatre. The production is hugely ambitious and a definite step into the unknown, but a tremendous opportunity to allow two artistic worlds to come together and learn from each other. Theatre involves removing the audience from their everyday lives and into a new situation; this will certainly be the case with Playcraft Live but the step will be even further than normal. We are looking forward to involving new audiences in our work as the production comes together over the summer and hope that the performance will reach a large audience across two worlds."

More information is available at www.playcraft.live.

(CD/LM)