Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance! Hybrid Embodiment in Social VR and the Theatre

Come, Fur(r)es, Dance! is a devised, hybrid lecture-performance performed on the 26th, 27th, and 28th of May 2023, in UCSC’s eXperimental Theater. It is the final iteration in a series of performative experiments I used to better understand the ways experiences of masculinity are navigated, manipulated, and remade in communities within social VR (virtual reality). Created with the help of three devising artists, a team of student designers, a technical crew, and the larger UCSC arts community, Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance! uses puppetry, dance, live interviews, and storytelling performed across virtual- and meat-space. The work focuses on the legacy of military development in the embodied experience of VR users, the desires that traverse the gap between users' identity presentations in and out of VR, and directly engages with a Waifu-themed MilSim community that calls themselves the British Armed Forces. To facilitate the rehearsals and performance of Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance!, I developed a distributed signal management system for a flexible, mediated stage ecology. This thesis situates the performance within the social, artistic, and personal context from which Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance! arose and reflects on the insights and challenges from throughout its making. First, I explore the discoveries unearthed by the performance surrounding virtual masculinities and the drives behind certain social formations in VR. Then, I discuss my strategy of critique within the structure and aesthetic logic of Come, Fur(r)ies, Dance!. After, I reflect on the rehearsal practices that created the performance, outline two technical innovations that made it possible, and situate the performance within an artistic field engaged with related concerns. Finally, I connect this work to my personal history. The end of the thesis includes an archival script from the first performance and a separate reflection on technical challenges