A Web-Oriented Multi-layer Model to Interact with Theatrical Performances

This paper presents an innovative approach to online fruition of theater performances. Web applications like traditional viewers are already available for the wide audience of Internet users. Our proposal aims at adding both interactivity and multi-layer fruition, and a way to manipulate and create new media. The premise to reach these goals is digitizing a number of heterogeneous materials in order to describe a single performance comprehensively, e.g. different video and audio-takes from different perspectives, and a number of related materials such as scripts, fashion plates, playbills, etc. The format we adopt to encode such information is based on the XML international standard known as IEEE 1599. Finally, an advanced Web player supporting search and play functions for synchronized materials must be designed. This work describes the whole process, from the acquisition of materials directly on the stage to their publishing on a Web portal.