Andy McRae of Sun Microsystems Inc has developed what he calls Karaoke Shakespeare. This is a virtual reality system that enables people to act in their favourite Shakespeare from their armchairs. All they have to do is to put on a helmet and three-dimensional computer graphics produce a view of the Globe theatre just as it is believed to have been in Elizabethan times, while computerised characters move and speak using the voices of real actors – their faces can also be pasted in. Once the actors have spoken, the user’s own lines are projected through a head-up display similar to that used by fighter pilots, and the view changes with each movement of the head or joystick. Celebrated actor Robert Powell will be demonstrating the device this month to trustees of the Shakespeare Globe Theatre Project – Sam Wanamaker’s dogged and heroic effort to build a replica Globe on the Thames at Southwark, which is due to open next year although sad to say, he did not live to see it. McRae’s next project is going to be animating Mercutio and Tybalt’s duel for a presentation of that blatantly heterosexual play, Romeo & Juliet.
