Michael Wheeler

Michael Wheeler is Director of Artistic Research at SpiderWebShow Performance, Canada’s first live digital performance company. He was previously Executive Director and Transformation Designer of Generator, a mentoring, teaching, and innovation incubator in Toronto that empowers independent artists, producers and leaders. He has also been a curator of The Freefall Festival with The Theatre Centre, curator of HATCH emerging artist projects with Harbourfront Centre, and an Intern Director at The Shaw Festival.

Michael is a Co-Curator of FOLDA (The Festival of Live Digital Art) occurring annually in June at The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts. Directing credits include Behaviour at GCTC, Objections to Sex and Violence at Artscape Sandbox, Rifles at NSTF, and You Should Have Stayed Home National Tour. He holds a BA (distinction) from McGill University and a MFA from The American Repertory Theatre/ Moscow Art Theatre Institute for Advanced Theatre Training at Harvard University.

Here is an interview with Michael Wheeler, where he shares his insights on the metaverse and his perspectives on virtual worlds, together with his collaborator Seyed M. Tabatabaei.

"I think the metaverse is like a third virtual space. What distinguishes it from other virtual spaces is its three-dimensional co-presence. And for theater, that's pretty interesting because theater really requires three dimensions; film is two-dimensional, and theater is three-dimensional in some ways. The opening up of the third dimension really kind of expands the possibility to—I don’t want to say replicate—but come closer to the conditions of in-person theater than other digital tools I’ve run into."

"Like intermedial performances, where basically people wear these avatars—you don’t know who they are, there are fewer consequences to acting out, and you end up with people doing weird stuff they would never do if they were physically present in the same space. Something we added to the show really early on was a simple interaction: turning to someone else in the group and talking to them about whether they had ever been to a protest before. It was just a really short, one-minute exchange where you had to be yourself and communicate with another human co-occupying that space with you. It felt like this really helped with behavioral issues because people established themselves early on as real humans with real experiences and at least one other person in the production knew that about them. So, I think there’s real value in these immersive, intermedial productions—having something that personally connects you to the other people in the experience."

—Michael Wheeler

Check out more details about You Should Have Stayed Home, a live VR theatre project directed by Michael Wheeler: https://www.folda.ca/yshsh/