Lizardly

Co-Creator, Co-Director & Creative Technologist

Lizardly is a live, mixed reality play created by Heidi Boisvert and Kat Mustatea that explores AI, environmental collapse, and interspeciality. Vincent and Rebecca’s marriage is falling apart as they brace for an oncoming hurricane and simultaneously turn into lizards. Set in post-anthropocene Miami, humans have not been wiped out, so much as they have adapted to rapid environmental shifts by mutating into reptiles. Vincent and Rebecca have no choice but to weather the storm inside their smart-home, a technological remnant named June whose functions (and malfunctions) they weaponize in an escalating domestic turf war. 

The staging employs VR, MoCap and Machine Learning to create a vivid portrayal of hybrid humans in a posthuman world. As a way of bringing the metaphor of transformation outward, the characters influence their surroundings through their gestures, triggering transformations in the environment. 

The show can be viewed concurrently in two ways: 1) in-person theatrical experience with live actors and a projection-mapped environment, and 2) digital experience inside VR using MoCap. A live audience is able to see both the live performers in MoCap suits, as well as the lizard avatars they control in a lush, terrarium-like environment in VR. Part of the excitement and delight of this staging is the audience being asked to navigate between two realities, between synthetic and natural ecologies, between human and lizard-like bodies and gestures.

The development of this piece was supported by The GALLIM Moving Women residency: Summer 2021, New York Live Arts, LEIMAY, The Barnard Movement Lab, and The Emerging Technology Department at The New York City College of Technology.