I led the creative direction and wrote the scenario for Play! — a 12-minute live performance combining, in real time on stage: live choreography, live motion capture, live sound design, live virtual camera operation, live editing, and real-time 3D virtual sets. On stage: a dancer, a musician, and a director working around a physical model of a five-apartment building. On the giant screen behind them: the same building in 3D, its apartments initially empty.
The principle, borrowed from Zbigniew Rybczynski’s Oscar-winning short film Tango — but performed live, not in post-production: the dancer mimes the first inhabitant’s routine. The motion capture records his gestures and immediately loops them inside the 3D apartment. While the first character repeats his actions endlessly, the dancer has already moved on to the next inhabitant. Then the next. Apartment by apartment, the building fills with parallel lives.
Each scene tells the story of one inhabitant, and each action triggers a chain reaction in a neighbour’s life — the Tati mechanic. A kid breaks a lamp playing ball in the apartment; his father orders him to watch a Netfox series instead. A lightbulb delivered in a massive package by a “Babylon Prime” drone. Two neighbours playing ping pong in Social VR without realising they live metres apart. A gentle, retro-futuristic satire of our consumer and entertainment society.
The trick — and the challenge — is that the characters are captured independently but must respond to each other once their loops coexist. A pizza delivery guy rings at apartment 3; the resident of apartment 3 opens the door and picks up the pizza — except they were recorded minutes apart. The timing of each capture is millimetric: every gesture is choreographed not only for its own scene, but for how it will interact with all the loops already running. The comedy comes from the accumulation — from watching all these routines collide, overlap, trigger reactions across floors. The musician layers the soundtrack the same way: each sound effect loops and stacks, until the building hums with the absurd symphony of modern domesticity.
No speech — just mumbling, as in Playtime. No cuts — everything on screen is generated live, in a single take.
