Real Issues on a Virtual Set

“This is bizarre,� Richard Kind said to no one in particular as he stood onstage the first day of rehearsals for “Perfect.�

Who could blame him? The “Spin City� actor was momentarily distracted from his line reading by the sight of his own face, looming 10 feet tall on the walls behind him. Regrouping, Kind settled into the scene, even as every twitch, blink and arched eyebrow showed up on the scrim, magnified 15-fold.

“Perfect,� a new play by writer-producer-actor Mark Kassen, runs through Nov. 11 at the Tiffany Theater. In it, a scientist (Kind), a control-freak mother-to-be (Judy Greer) and her husband (Kassen) try to create the “perfect� baby via chromosome manipulation. The biotech corporation handling the impregnation procedure is making a documentary about their experience, screened simultaneously in epic-scale as the story plays out onstage.

Layered on top of the live video is a fluid mix of still images and documentary footage streaming from robotic projectors. The set is composed of two chairs, a table, and one computer disc packed with “media.�

What’s so bad about nails, lumber and paint?

Kassen said he needed a setting that would reflect the play’s high-tech themes. “What happened was, we wanted to tell the story, which is really about technology and humanity evolving together,� he said, digging into a bag of pretzels from the back of the darkened theater. “And as we developed the piece, we wanted to do the telling of it in a way that metaphorically mirrored what it was in the story. We went out, and said, ‘OK, what’s out there? A slide projector and a video camera. Let’s go from there.�’

While Kind and Greer rehearsed with director Charles Otte, a crew of techies, jammed into the theater’s control booth amid a tangle of cords, tapped out instructions on computers, pushed buttons on mixing consoles and scrolled through images on the tiny monitor of a digital-video camera.

Noodling on a laptop computer: Greg Deocampo. A self-described “technologist-artist,� Deocampo, 34, programmed the multimedia for U2’s 1992 Zoo TV tour. After helping launch Internet company Ifilm, he and Ifilm founder Roger Raderman met a San Francisco ber-geek named Travis Threlkel and decided to go into a new business: virtual reality. Their company, Obscura Digital, designs the software and projectors that synchronize the timing and placement of “Perfect’s� digital scenery.

“Travis is a genuine visionary-mad scientist-genius guy,� Deocampo said, “and he had this notion of how to inexpensively create VR illusions that were being very expensively deployed at places like NASA. One of the first things we’re doing with it is ‘Perfect.’ We saw this as an interesting opportunity to synthesize some of the qualities of cinema with theater. And that’s what is going on here.�

Raderman, 33, who left Ifilm about a year ago and now lives in Los Angeles, cheerfully admitted his theater background is limited to a “Pirates of Penzance� role in high school. “But I’ve always wanted to get involved in something very raw and exciting and human,� he said by phone from Obscura headquarters in San Francisco. “This will get us into the Los Angeles community and show people how projection can be used for theater in new ways. It becomes another discipline within the construction of a play. The set designer is now working with video rather than with sets; that’s one way of looking at it.�

Like Raderman and Deocampo, video artist Jonas Goldstein, 28, is another refugee from the dot-com meltdown--he served as creative director for the once-hot, now-defunct Web site Pseudo.com before moving west from New York a year ago. For “Perfect,� Jonas shot video footage of sushi bars and office buildings around Los Angeles that can now be projected as backgrounds for scenes in the play.

Hunched over the tiny monitor of a digital camera, the goateed artist, who uses only his first name professionally, said some of the backdrop imagery does more than set the scene. “Once in a while, we do some subversive stuff--we’ll cut these things in randomly throughout the piece as a kind of subjective wash. So if they’re talking about babies, we might throw in fetal or sperm imagery or�--courtesy of Jonas’ infant daughter--�a baby head.�

“It’s kind of like filmmaking,� Jonas continued. “You set up your exterior, for example, a big apartment building. Then you go into the kitchen. And then as the scene progresses, the imagery will mute and become more abstract because we don’t want people watching the video the whole time. We want them focused on the actors.� As a blurred-nearly-beyond-recognition image crawls into view on the wall behind the actors, Jonas notes, “That’s a teapot. And then every time there’s a scene change, we press one of these buttons and it goes zzzzoop.� Jonas points to the two projectors mounted on the ceiling that suddenly swivel in response to his command, throwing a fresh set of images onto the theater wall. Kassen, 30, didn’t even use e-mail before he started working on “Perfect� two years ago. But he and his brother Adam, 28, who co-produces and performs in “Perfect,� shared a do-it-yourself work ethic that more than compensated for any lack of technical savvy. Since moving here five years ago, the Syracuse, N.Y., natives have produced an independent film, “Trigger Happy,� and sold a pilot to MTV in between acting gigs on sitcoms (“Cybill�) and made-for-TV movies (“Growing Up Brady,� “The Secret�).

The Kassens also possess a gift for schmoozing that’s helped open doors--and checkbooks--throughout Hollywood. In fact, it was an industry party at the Sundance Film Festival two years ago that convinced the brothers they should join forces with the virtual reality crowd. “What really sold us on Obscura was they threw this party that Roger and Greg and Travis--all those guys from San Francisco--did the media for,� Adam Kassen says. “They had screens set up all over, and cameras and film crews shooting video that they were mixing in with the music and projecting everywhere and we were like, that is cool .�

Adds his brother, “What was important to us, our fear was, as cool as all the media is, it can’t be a light show. ‘Perfect’ isn’t a rock show. There’s a story being told. The play is the message, and the media is the set. And at this party, people didn’t just stop and stare at the video. The media really mixed in this ambient visual noise that led to the vibe, and that’s what was tasteful about it and that’s what we wanted to implement.�

To finance his production, Mark Kassen called for support from a circle of established Hollywood players whom he’d met while acting in plays and pitching his film scripts around town, among them Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman and Jean Doumanian, the New York producer behind nearly a dozen Woody Allen movies. Kassen refused to comment on the cost of the production other than to say, “We spent less than half of the one-day catering budget for ‘Titanic.�’

Kassen recruited director Otte to orchestrate performances with the multimedia elements. Otte had worked with Robert Wilson on the director’s celebrated multimedia opera “Einstein on the Beach� in a 1982 restaging at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He also directed composer Philip Glass’ 1994 piece at BAM in which the Jean Cocteau film “La Belle et La Bte� was stripped of sound and projected against a screen to the accompaniment of live chorus and orchestra. “These elements we use in ‘Perfect’ have certainly all existed in and of themselves, but it’s never been put together this way,� Otte said. “What’s interesting about this play is that there’s this huge scientific media element, plus live actors on a basically empty stage. It’s a kind of combination of the old and the new, which we’re able to reflect in a split way.

“I worked with Wilson a long time, and Bob had this ability to see different things through the juxtaposition of different elements. With ‘Perfect,’ it’s like there’s a verbal text and there’s a visual text. Audiences will hopefully see things in a new way.�

Kassen--and his backers--hope “Perfect� has a life beyond its Los Angeles run. “Some of the investors are interested in making it into a movie,� he said. And, of course, Kassen and company would like to see the play make it to New York. One perk: The production will certainly travel light, because all the scenery can be downloaded onto a DVD.

Any script changes can be incorporated into the set design with a few clicks of the mouse, Kassen said. “I mean, imagine, if you decided to cut out a scene and you don’t want the staircase anymore as part of the set, all we have to do is go to the computer, crop it out and burn a new CD.�

While Greer worked on a scene with cast mate Lola Glaudini, Kassen, clearly tickled with the new gizmos at his disposal, said, “Look at the monitor up there. You’re seeing these images of her face behind her [real] face, and on top of it, you see the location where the scene is taking place. Then the projectors will move, the whole visual scene will morph and it will become a backup art that’s metaphorical for the subject matter of what is going on onstage. Then the entire image will change when you move to the next scene to become whatever location we need at any given time. And on top of that, there’s this very intimate scene that’s about to go on. Pretty cool, huh?� *

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“PERFECT,� Tiffany Theater, 8532 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood. Dates: Thursdays-Fridays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays, 5 and 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m. Ends. Nov. 11. Price: $25. Phone: (310) 289-2999.