Virtual Reality for Theatre Production & Planning
Virtual Reality is the best way to explore and truly understand a venue without visiting it in person.
VR allows you to explore a true-to-scale digital replica of a venue, allowing those unable to travel to clearly understand proposed designs with no CAD skills necessary.
We create VR models for both existing venues and shows in addition to ones that are still in being designed.
VR allows you to physically look around, walk around, and sit down in the seats of a millimetre-correct virtual replica of a space, enabling you to make decisions with absolute confidence years in advance.
It’s the most natural and accurate way of checking a venue’s sightlines and requires no skill or learning to immediately understand the complexities of a venue when in a headset.
Our VR visualisations have been used in the planning processes of a number of theatre productions, including Bat Out of Hell The Musical, Come From Away, Moulin Rouge! The Musical, and worldwide productions of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
Broadway, Melbourne, Hamburg
Working alongside production manager Gary Beestone and production designers Christine Jones and Brett J. Banakis, Preevue provided its services of LiDAR laser scanning, CAD modelling, and VR visualisation for the redesign of Broadway’s Lyric Theatre for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. This redesign narrowed the auditorium which cut capacity and, combined with the lowered ceiling, created a much more intimate performance space for the play by Jack Thorne, John Tiffany, and J. K. Rowling.
Preevue developed VR visualisation files as the design iterated, with two VR suites setup on either side of the Atlantic to enable the split Creative and Production teams to step into the 3D model in either New York or London.
“Preevue’s unique tailored virtual reality system was incredibly useful for developing the re-design of the Lyric Theatre and made communicating design changes in virtual reality to our transatlantic teams a possibility. We are very excited to work with Preevue on other projects in the future!”
Southwark Playhouse
As part of its Future Playhouse plans to develop two new permanent homes, South London-based Southwark Playhouse contracted Preevue to produce a VR visualisation of its planned Newington Butts site, scheduled for opening in 2021. This visualisation was used in-house for design review and for open-house and fundraising events where members of the public, patrons, and invited guests could explore the new venue in VR.
“We couldn’t wait to start showing people around our brand new theatre building but there was just one problem… it wasn’t built yet! Preevue’s impressive technology enabled us to see the entire space from the comfort of our office and helped us make design changes to the build before it was too late. It was also a great feature at a recent fundraising event where we were able to provide stakeholders with the opportunity to look around simply by putting on a headset. Ryan and his team are the people to go to for theatre previs and VR and I’m pleased to report they’re pretty delightful in real life too!”
King’s Head Theatre
Preevue provided its services to the planned new King’s Head Theatre site at the Islington Square development.
