The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy

Sinking Ship Productions & Theater in Quarantine

The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy adapts the Stanislaw Lem story of a man trapped in a time loop who attempts to escape by creating other versions of himself, only to discover that hell is other people- particularly if those other people are yourself.

The project began during the pandemic as a streaming production, where I remotely programmed real-time video processing and compositing in Isadora from Los Angeles into a setup in New York. When we adapted the piece for in-person performance, I rebuilt the entire technical pipeline in TouchDesigner to improve performance, rendering quality and maintainability.

For the live version we projected a live composite into the theater while simultaneously streaming it remotely. This meant audiences could see both the finished visual effect and understand the technical mechanics behind it. We expanded the spatial world considerably, adding scenes like a spacewalk across the top of the set and new scenes that expanded beyond the original box and let the performer interact with the space in ways that weren't possible in the original stream.

The production debuted at Under the Radar Festival in New York, followed by an extended run at New York Theatre Workshop, then toured to Field Hall in Port Angeles, Washington, and NC State LIVE in Raleigh, North Carolina.

More information is available from Sinking Ship Productions