Scene 1
Prince Ferdinand puts a magic vail on and sends his mirage to his sister’s wedding in oversea. Royal family’s PR agent Stephana broadcasts the wedding to citizens who have MagBook (Magic Book) . Prince Ferdinand’s father King Alonso provides magic facilities such as MagBook and allows citizens to control spirits, making their life more convenient. But the truth is that people rely on spirits and become lazier. Also due to receiving King’s statement everytime they use magic tools, people’s thoughts unconsciously follow King’s. Additionally, King’s family let their favorite merchants advertise products through magic devise, as they get returns from merchants. Now it seems that citizens are under King’s control and Royal family possess more wealth due to magic. However those magic technologies was developed by a genius magician and previous Duke Prospero who was stoled his magic by King Alonso and marooned to a solitary island far off in the ocean with his wife and baby daughter.
During the live streaming of royal wedding, words of accusation against Royal family appear suddenly. The streaming image is hacked by Prospero’s spirit Ariel who reveals all secrets of Royal family. Ariel keeps slandering Royal family and distorting images of “Beloved Prince” Ferdinand, then it leads an uplifting backlash of Royal family. Now royal family faces a storm of criticism.
A storm of backlash
A storm of backlash in the internet
King and his family meet the storm of backlash from their people and their plan of total domination (refer Monopolistic wealth) was shipwrecked, while In the original text, King Alonso, Prince Ferdinand and their companions are caught up in the storm which Prospero created by using his spirit Ariel.
Positive and negative aspects of digital technology
Development of digital technology allows us to see and talk people no matter how far they are, buy anything whenever you want, and follow our favorite celebrities or release our information to everyone all the time. It seems just fantastic, however it contains possibility of being a passive consumer, SNS addict, victim of mind control.
In this scene, Prince Ferdinand is waring a magic vail and seeing, talking, and touching his sister who is in overseas. I came up with this idea, when I saw PR video of Google Kinect and PlayStation VR. Virtual Reality allows you to have variety of experience without leaving your room. A reporter comments “Oh, I don’t need to travel abroad anymore!”. I had a sense of discomfort when I listened his words. Is it truly the same to go abroad and experience trip abroad by using VR?
VR trip must be safer than real journey because everything is already programmed. There is no chaos where we can feel for organic harmony. We can’t create organic harmony in pre-established harmony.
Keywords
Inspiration
Challenge
I tried to devise this scene without “organic harmony”. When Victor who played Prince Ferdinand and I thought about “what is the opposite of organic harmony?”, one of our answers is “automatic repetition”. In this scene, Victor performs with pre-recorded his image. He needs to show exactly the same movement as he did when he recorded. Victor found that there is no space for creativity. Honestly, he seems to hate practicing this scene, but this situation is similar to process of making Japanese big theatre productions. Japanese theatre industry often buy play right (including directing plan and scenography) of Broadway’s massive hit musical, copy everything and perform in Japanese. It’s efficient, but I cannot help wondering “is there enough space for creativity?”