On February 23 and March 2, 2025, a group of volunteer actors, directors, designers and crew—members of the VR Theatre Study Group—produced Omnibus Performance Vol 1, a collection of four short Japanese VR plays presented at Mashiro Small Theater. Established in early 2024, Mashiro—which means “all-white” in Japanese in reference to its monochrome exterior—is a 50-seat virtual black box space operated on the social VR platform, VRChat. Under the direction of めどう (Meadow), a VR actor and VTuber from Japan, Mashiro has become a popular hub for live theatre, dance, role-playing games, and improvisation, while also supporting newcomers in creating VR-based performance. In this interview, I spoke with Meadow about the challenges and possibilities of creating shogekijo engeki in virtual reality.
Shogekijo engeki or the little theatre movement emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction against the more commercial and western-influenced realist theatre known as shingeki. It was characterised by experimental and intimate performances staged in small venues—sometimes in tents or other makeshift structures—often with minimal set designs, ensemble-based acting, and politically charged themes. Influenced by avant-garde and underground theatre movements worldwide, shogekijo became a space for challenging conventions and norms, both in society and in the theatre itself. It was a launchpad for actors, directors, and playwrights, whose experiments with form fuelled much of the creative innovation of that time. Little theatres can be found in most major cities in Japan today, but Tokyo has a significant concentration of venues, particularly in the Shimokitazawa district in Setagaya Ward.
Andrew Eglinton: Before we talk about the Mashiro Small Theater, could I ask you to say a bit about your background in theatre?
Meadow: I’ve always been interested in theatre and I’m a keen theatre-goer, but prior to working on performance in VR, I didn’t have any real-world theatre experience. I took lessons in narration and voice acting, and I have been working in that area for over six years, including as a VTuber. In the fall of 2021, I happened across a call for participants to join a new theatre company in VRChat. I worked on several short VR plays as an actor but because the productions took a long time to make, my first stage appearance was in December 2023. During the interim period, I was learning how to perform in VR, and how to operate VR theatre. I also rehearsed for productions, one of which happened to be canceled. That was my first foray into making VR theatre.
After that, in late 2022, I joined a VR production of Macbeth directed by Nukopotsu and Ippanshadan Hōjin Metatheater (Meta Theatre Association). I worked on that piece as a light operator. I was then invited to work as an actor on a production called B no Higeki (The Tragedy of B) by the Tokyo-based real-world/VR comedy theatre troupe, Come-dias. This was in the summer of 2023. Around the same time, I got my first acting role in a production called Harmonica, by the IMGN theatre company, which was a short drama set to a classical music score.
Another project I’ve worked on, and this is perhaps the most significant one in my VR theatre career so far, is live improvisation. While working on Macbeth in 2022, I met a VR performer called Sebiru who mentioned the idea of improv, and I thought it sounded great. Using a method known as “Masetro Impro™,” which is a competitive from of live improv comedy conceived by the late British theatre director, Keith Johnston, I set up an improv troupe called Hakushiza (which means blank paper theatre). At that time, there seemed to be few VR theatre spaces that could be used to produce regular improv shows, particularly spaces that could facilitate stage devices such as scoring and changing background music on the fly, which are requisites for this type of improv. Consequently, I decided to create Mashiro Small Theater in November 2022, and the first improv production was in January 2023. Hakushiza will soon produce the 22nd edition of the monthly improv event.
AE: The full title of your theatre venue in Japanese is Mashiro Shogekijo Virtual Engeki Kenkyuu Kai, which means the Mashiro Small Theater Virtual Theater Study Group. Could you talk about how this organization functions? Could you also explain what the “study group” element in that title refers to?
Meadow: I wanted the venue to be used more, so I tried lending it to other VR theatre communities and groups, but many already owned their own worlds, so there wasn’t as much demand for it as I expected. From there, I decided to put a call out to try and bring people into the venue who were interested in creating VR theatre but lacked the experience or technical know-how to do so. That’s where the “study group” idea came from.
The type of theatre we produce in this venue is called shogekijo engeki, which means it’s part of the “little theatre” tradition in Japan of artists performing in venues with small seating capacities (Mashiro Little Theater seats around 50 people) on stages that are in close proximity to the audience. When I put the call out for participants, I tried to target two groups of people: those who had VRChat experience but wanted to learn about making shogekijo theatre, and those who had real-world shogekijo experience, but wanted to learn about VR theatre.
AE: Is the organization volunteer based or is financial remuneration involved?
Meadow: It’s mainly volunteer work, but there are some paid assets, such as the performance rights for play texts, 3D models, set design, and publicity design.
AE: Do cast members use their own avatars?
Meadow: In our most recent show, Omnibus Performance Vol.1, most actors used their own avatars. But in the case that an actor doesn’t have an appropriate avatar, then the cost of creating one is covered by the Study Group’s budget.
AE: What are the main objectives for Mashiro Little Theater? Do you have a vision for how you’d like to develop this theatre?
Meadow: Right now, it’s a volunteer organization. People participate because they want to do so, and it works as a kind of community theatre. I recently wrote a blog post, in which I explained that I want to create a theatre for performers and audiences that is both virtual and real. This means selling tickets and getting audiences to come and see our shows. It also means maintaining a high standard of timely and engaging work. The money from ticket sales would go back to staff and actors, and towards the next show. That’s the basic structure I have in mind.
However, if we were to try and do this right now, to get people to pay for tickets, we face the problem that people outside VR don’t know that we exist. Also, performing for money brings with it added pressure, which may be off-putting for some members. People take pride in doing this work as a volunteer activity, and so part of the use of the term “study group” is in the sense of working towards overcoming those hurdles. By mixing people with real-world theatre experience and people with VR experience, we’re able to raise the bar in terms of artistic standards, and what motivates us to take this activity seriously is the fact that even though audiences currently watch the shows for free, they give us their time. Part of the reason for choosing the shogekijo engeki format is because you can gauge straight away whether a piece of work is dedicated and serious.
Returning to the question of objectives, the vision is to try and implement this model of paid performance, which means building an audience and maintaining high production standards. As a system, this is something we can implement quite quickly. So, perhaps by the 3rd or 4th performance [the third or fourth editions of Omnibus Performance] this is something we will try. And if it works, then other theatre groups could potentially use the structure and economy we have put in place too. As I mentioned earlier, this will enable us to merge real-world theatre with VR theatre, and speaking personally as a performer, that’s the sort of setting I’d like to perform in.
AE: Using Omnibus Performance Vol.1, the most recent production at Mashiro Small Theater, as an example, could you explain in more detail what the production process entails?
Meadow: The Omnibus show was a compilation of four short plays, which were split between four teams, each with three to four actors and a director. There was also an assistant director (Nanashiki) who worked between teams helping with practical staging problems. We also had a set designer (Vivi) who built the 3D models, a sound designer, and stage manager. The plays were chosen by the directors in each team from two websites: the Playtext Digital Archive and Scenario League. On both websites, you must apply for performance rights, and some plays require paying a fee. It depends on the play and playwright.
The sound, lights, special effects, and set changes are all synced as actions or checkpoints on a timeline that I program in Unity. We import that timeline into VRChat and use a control panel backstage in the theatre to operate everything. Cueing the show is a matter of cycling through the checkpoints in time with the performers on stage. When a scene goes to blackout, the audience sits in darkness, but behind the stage curtain, the performers can see the stage and can either walk or teleport between blocking positions. Those positions are also sequentially recorded and synced with the timeline. They appear as green circles on stage, visible only to the performers. I learnt how to create the timeline in Unity while I was working on the show called Harmonica that I mentioned earlier. An engineer working with the IMGN theatre company called Yatsuhashi Maron (八ツ橋まろん) taught me the basics of timeline building in Unity. I met quite a few engineers through that project.
AE: I’d like to ask about the audience at Mashiro Small Theater. When I attended the Omnibus show in February, I was struck by how close-knit the audience seemed. After the show, people gathered outside the venue in groups to talk about what they’d seen. I also noticed a lot of social media activity after the shows, predominantly on X (formerly Twitter), where participants posted a lot of photos from the show. There was a real sense of community at the venue. How did you go about building your audience and do you have any idea what the general demographic makeup is?
Meadow: Our audience is almost all Japanese and more than half is made up of friends of the actors and staff, or members of other VR theatre groups. Another part of our audience comes from the Hakushiza improv shows, and yet another segment comes via the VRChat event calendar where we post information on our upcoming shows. At the same time, as I mentioned earlier, to push Mashiro further, we need to expand our audience, and part of that means bringing in people who have little or no experience of VR. There are different strands to this, but to give one example, I invited the playwrights whose works we performed in Omnibus, to see the shows, in the hope of developing collaborative relationships. The playwright behind Kimi to Kakeru Mirai (a future spent with you), which was the first of the four short plays in Omnibus, was really interested in VR Theatre. His name is Ozaki and he is interested in creating a new play specifically for the VR theatre medium. Another strand is related to my own theatre-going, I often go to Shimokitazawa in Tokyo, which is an area known for shōgekijō engeki, and there’s a website called Kangeki Zanmai (lit. theatre addict) that lists most of the current small theatre shows, artists and companies, and that’s another platform I use to spread the word. They also arrange community events, where you can go and speak about the new work that you’re producing. Those are some examples of how we’re building an audience.
In terms of demographics, first of all in VRChat in general, there are more male users than female (or non-binary users), however for Omnibus, my personal feeling (and this might not be accurate) is that there were more women audience members. In addition, the ratio of male to female members in the Study Group is almost 50/50.
AE: My last question is about the design of your theatre space. The Mashiro Small Theater is a realistic 3D representation of a real-world shōgekijō. It is an end-on, black box-style theatre. Much of the VR theatre that I have seen over the past five years has been staged in spaces that are site-specific—or more accurately—world-specific. The VR worlds are not only designed specifically for each performance, but also often have nothing to do with conventional theatre structures. Part of the reason for this is an attempt to harness the potential of the VR medium to produce experiences that would otherwise be impossible in real-world settings. Why did you opt for a realistic replica of a real-world theatre?
Meadow: I want to keep the option of real-world experience open even in VR. In other words, I don’t want to create a division between VR theatre and real-world theatre. I mentioned earlier on about a production I was involved in called the Tragedy of B by the theatre group called Come-dias. The director of that group, Aire Suzuki, who is also a performer and playwright, worked a lot with me in rehearsal. At one point he said, the audience needs to prepare for the fact that they are about to watch a play. What he meant by that is that when an audience joins the VR session, enters the VR performance world, and goes straight into the performance, they haven’t had the chance to prepare themselves for the fact that they’re going to see a performance. That’s a completely different experience to real-world theatre. I want the audience to feel like they’ve experienced a theatre show. That’s why I made this theatre in a more conventional way, with an entrance, a reception desk, an auditorium with seating, and a build up to the start of the performance. At the same time, I want to embrace the fact that there are things in VR which are simply not possible to replicate in the real-world, different laws of physics and so on, which present their own constraints, just as there are constraints in real-world physical spaces. Those constraints inspire creative ingenuity. Of course, some directors might choose to only work within the realm of the irreal, which is there as a choice, but I want to facilitate a plurality of choices. For the Omnibus show, I wanted the audience to feel like they had been to see a theatre show and even though that was my personal wish, as it happens, the team members also shared similar sentiments. Many of them were beginners, so the verisimilitude of a real theatre space helped them acclimatize to the technical demands of performing in VR.
Note: this interview was conducted on 7 March 2025 in VRChat using a mix of English and Japanese, with both speakers mixing languages. The two-hour exchange was cut and edited into this readable format. One of the main parts that was cut was a practical demonstration by Meadow of Mashiro Theatre’s technical functionality.
Masthead image: Meadow explains the timeline feature back stage at Mashiro Small Theater.
