Monash students in demand at Edinburgh Fringe Festival

BY YU CHEN

Monash University Student Theatre’s (MUST) interactive online production ‘Asynchrony’ has just finished its successful run at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with its final performance selling out. 

The show, which is in its second season at the Fringe Festival, is a theatrical work that takes place entirely over Minecraft and uses messaging platform Discord to interact with its audiences. 

The show was originally performed online in 2020 to Monash University audiences, before premiering on the virtual international stage from August 7-13. 

Asynchrony’s Creative Director Freya Solnordal said the show might be the first of its kind to have live audiences in a Minecraft space, and was inspired by the way the platform is already grounded in art and interactions. 

“We think this is the first live theatrical experience that actually has the audiences play in Minecraft with the actors whilst the story is taking place,” Ms Solnordal said.

Ms Solnordal said the Asynchrony team met some hardships while producing the show, including “inventing an entirely new process of working”.

“We had some roles that had never been needed in theatre before, like a Minecraft world building team,” she said.

Stage Manager Oliver Scholast said the technical team had to rebuild a few structures for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival such as a museum room based on the feedback from the original season’s audiences.

“We changed the aquarium...[as well as] front of house processes to keep everything super clear and help organise the show better,” he said.

Mr Scholast said being a technician for an online show is different from being a technician for a show on stage, and that the technical team needed to pay close attention to both actors and audiences at all times.

“We had to make sure that the actors were feeling comfortable with audiences,” he said.

“We [also] had to follow the audiences to make sure no one was falling behind.”

Actor Emma Batty said performing behind a laptop has its differences from the stage but mostly requires the same preparatory process.

“You still do all the character work, rehearsals and line work with the other actors,” Ms Batty said.

MUST Director Yvonne Virsik watched Asynchrony and said the show was a great example of multimedia innovation in theatre and that accessibility was one of the great advantages of such a digital work.

“Works can be seen all over the world, by people who have transport and mobility issues,”  Ms Virsik said.

“I think digital work will remain a part of the practice of many artists now, whatever happens.”

Considerations are currently being made to determine whether Asynchrony will have another season on the virtual stage.