You Should Have Stayed Home

A research program investigating the emerging medium of virtual reality theatre: live theatrical performances staged in virtual environments, where audiences are embodied in the world and interact with its set and performers.

The 2022 paper analysed audience interactions with the VR play You Should Have Stayed Home, developing a design space across three dimensions — participation, agency, and embodiment — and documenting how mechanical constraints on movement were used to communicate narrative tone. The 2024 CHI paper drew on interviews with the production team to document the process of creating VR theatre, including how game development and theatrical production practices were combined and where they came into tension.

The work is adjacent to the core human-AI interaction research but shares its methodological approach: studying novel interactive systems at the point where they are first encountered by real audiences, in order to understand how people make sense of new interaction paradigms before conventions form.

Read the 2022 paper → Read the 2024 paper →