Teatrillu

El Teatrillu (small theater) is a framework of interactive techniques for performing arts.

A toolkit to mix theater, visual art, puppeteering, juggling, magic, story-telling, stop-motion, animation, …

It’s a real-time interactive stage where real actors dive into a not-so-real world.  What happens in that world is absolutely up to the creator and the actor.

This is achieved using computer vision and gesture recognition software.

Scenography is built from real drawings, paintings and objects placed on a surface.  A camera right above that surface captures it’s elements and processes them using computer vision (OpenCV).

The actors (human) perform in front of a Kinect sensor.  Certain gestures are mapped to ‘magical’ actions.  For example, heavily waving the arms makes the actor fly.  Other actions include swimming, juggling impossible tricks, becoming incredibly strong, etc.

The following video features some of the possibilities that El Teatrillu offers.  It was shot during a 100% improvised performance we staged in an art gallery opening.  We used cut-out photocopies to build an army of chinese soldiers (just 2 or 3 soldiers puppets…), a white pen on black paper to draw a castle to defend ourselves from those enemies, cotton as clouds, broccoli as trees and seaweed, buttons as juggling balls, a coin as the shining sun, pieces of paper as platforms and slides, …