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Constellations

A theatre performance about a young man who loses his wife after a long illness. Struggling to cope with his grief, he turns to an experimental technology that allows him to reconnect with her in a parallel digital realm.

See more about this project

Constellations

  • Type: Interactive, Generative, Mapping, Stage
  • Location: National Theatre, Sofia
  • Premiere: September 2024
  • Director: Elitsa Yovcheva
  • Scenography, Costume Design, Interactive Media: Petko Tanchev

Text: Nick Payne | Composer: Georgi Atanasov | Assistant-director: Patricia Gospodinova | Cast: Nencho Kostov and Radina Dumanyan | Photographer: Stefan Zdraveski

A young man loses his wife after a long and painful illness. Struggling to cope with his grief, he turns to an experimental technology that allows him to reconnect with her in a parallel digital realm.

Where do the boundaries of life lie, and can it exist beyond its own end? What does "time" mean if the beginning and end are the same? Are the choices we make every day a true expression of free will, or are they predetermined? Perhaps free will exists where love and memory are powerful enough to carry us beyond the limits of reality – into a space where we can forgive ourselves, rethink our fate, transcend our pain, and discover the many dimensions of what it means to be together.

A Living Digital Landscape

The scenography of the performance is minimalistic yet deeply immersive. Generative projections sculpt each scene—not through literal imagery but via artistic interpretations that reveal the emotional and philosophical depths of the story. Light, movement, and digital visuals fuse into a dynamic, ever-shifting space—a living landscape reflecting the inner worlds of the characters. These projections are interactive, enabling actors to control their virtual avatars in real time, seamlessly weaving technology into the fabric of the narrative.

Extending Consciousness

Blending Stage and Virtual Presence

In the performance Constellations, the stage becomes a fusion of live acting and digital innovation. Actors appear simultaneously in physical form and as their projected digital counterparts, inhabiting an experimental simulation that captures the very essence of memory.

Marian, in particular, is present both corporeally and as a real-time animated avatar. Roland controls her movements using a smart ring that tracks gestures. This device transcends its role as a mere stage prop, serving instead as an extension of Roland’s consciousness within the narrative. His gestures animate Marian’s virtual self and provoke shifts in the story, dissolving the boundaries between the physical and the digital, the present and the remembered.

Technology in the Performance Design

The avatars are created using photogrammetry, a method for capturing an actor’s appearance in precise detail and reconstructing it as a 3D model. This approach involves photographing the subject from many angles so that the software can generate an accurate mesh and texture.

The production used the Digital Reality Lab’s custom rig with 112 high-resolution cameras, capturing 2.7 gigapixels of data in a single synchronised shot. This process produces highly detailed digital doubles, preserving the actors’ features and posture.

Once captured, the models are deliberately reinterpreted to align with the performance’s aesthetic. Instead of aiming for photorealism, the avatars are reduced to their essential characteristics, their forms fragmented and imperfect, and their surfaces given a digital, structural texture. This minimal and intentionally “unreal” treatment transforms the precise photogrammetric scans into stylised, otherworldly presences on stage—blurring the boundary between human identity and digital abstraction.

You can see behind-the-scenes videos of the avatar creation process on Instagram or learn more about the performance on the theatre’s website here.