RANDOM ACTOR

As a theatre artist, in collaboration with software engineers and graphics designers, Clay Hopper, senior lecturer with BU School of Theatre, is engaging in creative research where he attempts to utilize conventional projection mapping technology in combination with interactive, generative-computer graphics and computational vision, in order to create a completely fluid and projected environment for the actor.

Generative art is a relatively new digital artform. Essentially, it entails a computer programmer (artist) developing code that sets perimeters (an algorithm) for images that the computer generates. After coding the application, the artist inputs a certain stimulus (in this case the actor’s movements) and from this input, the computer “organically” generates imagery based on the code perimeters. Then the artist becomes an audience to the results.

The RANDOM ACTOR project team’s early work found that when attempting to stage a play within an immersive, fully projected-media environment, the normal system of rehearsal was insufficient for the aesthetic application they were pursuing. Because of the inordinate amount of time spent adjusting/writing code, the team developed the idea of a software application that could change the values of any given generative algorithm in real time, as they worked in rehearsal with the actors and other designers. In this way, all of the elements could be created together as a seamless whole: the projection design changing to accommodate the actors staging, the director then staging the actors to accommodate those new design adjustments, which then further refines the design and the values of the generative graphics.

The software tool, RANDOM ACTOR, is a new application for design in the theatre, with its specific demands around narrative, and with the capability for real-time design with an intuitive user interface eliminating the need for designers to write code.

To complete this project, the team is enlisting the help of a Visiting Interdisciplinary/Interactive Media Artist in Residence in the Spring of 2022. The Shipley Center’s support allows them to hire the highly accomplished interactive media artist, Paolo Scoppola, to work with students in The School of Visual Arts, The School of Theatre, and The Center for Computing and Data Sciences on a production of a play, EXIT THE KING by Eugène Ionesco, produced at the College of Fine Arts. This production will be the pilot for – and feature the deployment of – RANDOM ACTOR, the novel software tool that enables real-time design of interactive generative graphics in a narrative context.

Read the May 4, 2022 BU Today Story: Exit the King, and Enter Random Actor

March 2022 BU College of Fine Arts workshop with Paolo Scoppola.

Project Team & Partners

Clay Hopper

Project Team chopper@bu.edu

-- Please select a member -- Clay Hopper, Project Team James Grady, Project Team Ziba Cranmer, Project Partner Greta Bruce, Project Partner Paolo Scoppola, Project Partner

• Clay Hopper Project Team
• James Grady Project Team
• Ziba Cranmer Project Partner
• Greta Bruce Project Partner
• Paolo Scoppola Project Partner

Clay Hopper is a Senior Lecturer in Directing at BU School of Theatre. Previously Clay served as the Associate Artistic Director of Olney Theatre Center and Director of both the National Players and the Summer Shakespeare Festival at OTC. Directing credits include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, The…Read More

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Clay Hopper

Project Team chopper@bu.edu

Clay Hopper is a Senior Lecturer in Directing at BU School of Theatre. Previously Clay served as the Associate Artistic Director of Olney Theatre Center and Director of both the National Players and the Summer Shakespeare Festival at OTC. Directing credits include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Twelfth Night, The Tempest, Othello, The Taming of the Shrew, Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet and Amadeus. Hopper also directed Farragut North and Triumph of Love on Olney Theatre Center’s Main Stage and Call of the Wild, a musical adaptation of Jack London’s novel by Jon Lipsky, first as a workshop at Boston University, then as a touring production for The National Players on tour 59, culminating in the world premiere on Olney Theatre Center’s Main Stage in 2009.

Other recent credits include On the Verge or The Geography of Yearning at Contemporary America Theatre Festival Actor’s Lab. In 2002, Hopper founded and produced a new play series called New Works/After Hours at Lincoln Center Institute’s Clarke Studio Theatre. Off-off-Broadway: A Home Without by Robert Westfield, Different Zenby Clay Hopper with Third Eye Rep, Earthworms by Albert Innaurato with The Working Group, Triageby Chris Shiea with Miranda Theatre, and The Interrogation by Murphy Guyer with The Miranda Theatre. Hopper has formerly taught at Woolly Mammoth’s Theatre School and College of Wooster, where he directed King Lear and was visiting assistant professor in 2006. As Assistant Director, Hopper has worked at The Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, Manhattan Theatre Club, Roundabout Theatre Company, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Woolly Mammoth Theater Company. BFA from North Carolina School of the Arts and MFA from Boston University College of Fine Arts.