How UK theater companies are using AR and VR to broadcast productions to viewers at home, as the pandemic pushes companies to experiment with new art forms
The Interactive Storytelling Studio at the National Theater in London is using technology to bring a miniature musical to viewers' homes. Tweets: @cryptochiglobal , @mattandersonnyt , @hesherman , and @lucidpointeo365 Tweets: @cryptochiglobal : Looks like we will be going to the theater in the #Metaverse from now on 😄🧨 check out this great article from @nytimes about how the theater is going to be available for enjoyment from the comfort of your kitchen 🎭👀🚀 https://www.nytimes.com/... #CryptoChi #NFT #Crypto Matthew Anderson / @mattandersonnyt : When the singer in @NationalTheatre's “All Kinds of Limbo” was done, she faded into nothingness, leaving only a sink full of washing up behind. https://www.nytimes.com/... Howard Sherman / @hesherman : “Ambitious as such projects are, they are also — at least by theater standards — time-consuming and forbiddingly expensive.” https://www.nytimes.com/... @lucidpointeo365 : Microsoft in the News: “Augmented Reality Theater Takes a Bow. In Your Kitchen.” by Andrew Dickson via NYT https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Pandemic closures pushed the National Theatre's Interactive Storytelling Studio to stop treating the stage as the only venue: it is staging a miniature musical designed to be experienced through AR and VR in viewers' own homes, part of a broader wave of UK companies experimenting with new art forms under lockdown conditions.
The move extends an arc that started before COVID — chains like Cinemark and AMC were already testing high-end multiplayer VR inside their theaters back in 2019 — but flips the direction of travel: instead of pulling people into a venue to wear headsets, theater is pushing productions out to where the audience already is.
First-order effects
- The National Theatre gains a distribution channel that doesn't depend on house seats or touring schedules, letting its Interactive Storytelling Studio reach home viewers directly during restrictions on live attendance.
- Home audiences get a new category of ticketed content — productions built for headset viewing rather than filmed stagings — changing what 'going to the theater' can mean.
Second-order effects
- Venue operators like Cinemark and AMC, whose earlier in-theater VR experiments positioned them as immersive-experience hosts, now face cultural institutions competing for the same headset-bound leisure time from the opposite direction.
- Headset makers become the gatekeepers for this new distribution: as Meta's later Horizon TV hub shows, platform owners courting premium video partners are the natural buyers for theater content seeking scale beyond early adopters.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, live performance splits into two products — the physical production and a headset-native version — with institutions building studio capabilities in-house much as they once built broadcast arms.
- But the format's ceiling depends on hardware: as the history of VR/AR/MR devices argues, persistent hardware limitations have kept mainstream adoption slow, so home-staged immersive theater likely remains a niche complement to the stage rather than a replacement unless adoption curves bend.
The trend: Live entertainment is steadily developing headset-native formats, moving immersive experiences from dedicated venues toward the home as platform owners court premium content.