The Builders Association

Virtual Reality Intensive: In January, a cohort of drama students worked with Creative Associates group the Builders Association as the company developed its next cross-media performance in virtual reality (VR) spaces. The students collaborated with the company to explore the hybrid zone between live and immersive VR performance in a theatrical format. Working alongside the company as actors, technologists, and content creators, the students shared their findings in a private work-in-process showing at the end of their weeklong intensive.

The Builders Association is an award-winning New York-based cross media performance company directed by Marianne Weems. Since 1994, it has  created a significant body of work at the intersection of media and performance and toured to more than 100 theaters, festivals, and museums, including London’s Barbican Theatre, the Melbourne International Arts Festival, RomaEuropa Festival, the Singapore Arts Festival, and the Festival Iberoamericano de Bogotá. The group’s most recent five productions have premiered in New York at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It has worked with some unexpected collaborators including the essayist Pico Iyer, the architects Diller + Scofidio, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, and the South Asian arts collective motiroti.