The Books of Jacob / Part II

Marcus David
December 2024

La MaMa, in partnership with The Polish Cultural Institute of NY, proudly presents The Books of Jacob / Part II, a grand experiment in form which combines, not only, the real stage with virtual reality, but also takes us around the world with a synchronized performance happening simultaneously in New York, Serbia, Poland, Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Greece. Also unique is that the actors, performing in the physical space in their respective locations, also appear together in a virtual world, which audience members are encouraged to visit through a VR headset. The production is animated through narration and movement in the physical space and tells the story of a young Jew in the 18th-century who experiences ecstatic visions and travels across the Habsburg and Ottoman empires, meeting heretical condemnation one moment and messianic recognition the next.

VR design aesthetics, the kind most often seen in immersive video games, have been making appearances in the visual arts more and more, and The Books of Jacob /  Part II has that sort of vibe in the virtual space. The characters have a menacing look and their movements are quirky with joints that move like barbie dolls.  In the virtual space the production presents a montage of hi-tech visuals which brings to mind the amazing 1978 music video for the song The Robots by legendary electronic group, Kraftwerk, they themselves pioneers of both electronic music and visuals.  The Books of Jacob / Part II uses similar aesthetics and principles of what I would call Machine Art, in which machines are central to what the creative mind wants to manifest. The graphics were also projected on a couple of large screens so the production can be experienced by the theater audience in the real world.

Moving around the stage and following the action is a camera, not present so much for recording the action as to surveil the scene and sporadically project the action coming in from the multiple locations onto the screens. Surveillance has become a huge part of the world we live in and with cameras simply everywhere it seems inevitable that some kind of Surveillance Art would eventually emerge. I know it sounds totally dystopian, but here we are, where ever you go or whatever you do these days, remember to smile, you’re on camera.

The Books of Jacob / Part II also raises the interesting question of what it means to be an audience member in this unique and immersive experience. Once the audience is fully equipped with VR headsets would we even need to be together in a theater for this kind of production,  also considering the actors are in different parts of the world.

As technology becomes more ubiquitous and engaging, perhaps The Books of Jacob / Part II is offering us a vague impression of the shape of things to come. We ourselves can handle being audience members in a theater, but what of generations to come?

Mary Aiken, the world’s leading expert in forensic Cyberpsychology, touches upon this in her book The Cyber Effect when she writes about how people these days are so engaged by there smartphones that they are neglecting to make eye contact with their newborn babies, in other words, they feed the baby while scrolling on their phones. The hard truth is that our tech overlords simply want total control of our eyeballs, and so they are constantly introducing more addictive, dopamine-releasing incentives to keep our eyes trained on their devices. Eye contact and face to face interaction for the newborns is critical to their development, and let’s face it in the fight to control our eyeballs the tech is winning big time. Mary Aiken does a good job at pointing out this new phenomenon and she even goes on to speculate at the results of this lack of eye contact for newborns when she writes:

“Over time, people could become less able to interact face-to-face, less sociable. People could become less likely to form deep bonds with others, less able to feel or give love and to form lasting relationships, families, and communities. Some could find physical contact with other human beings problematic and even unwelcome. There could be a domino effect. Subsequent generations could be raised with even less attention, less love – or none at all. While it’s true that humans are gregarious by nature, and a search for connection is a basic human instinct and a survival skill, it does not happen magically and on its own. Real-world face time is required. This small and simple thing, millions of babies around the world getting less eye contact and less one-on-one attention, could result in an evolutionary blip.
Yes I said it. Evolutionary blip.
Less eye contact could change the course of human civilization.”

With this in mind perhaps it is really possible that future generations will prefer virtual reality performances because they won’t be able to handle being together in an audience with other human beings, and perhaps even the actors would prefer to perform in isolation because human contact is just too messy for them. If this is the case then The Books of Jacob / Part II could be a strong forerunner in filling a new cultural niche headed our way where our theater experiences will take place in the virtual world, so that we can be all alone and together at the same time.

The Books of Jacob / Part II

Krzysztof Garbaczewski
director, script, set design, VR design

December 6 – 8, 2024
La MaMa
74A East 4th Street
New York City

You can watch the full performance of The Books of Jacob /  Part II  here →