OK, this is a piece of news I’ve been dying to break. Tomorrow at 12:30 PST in the New Globe Theatre on the Millions of Us sim, Mark Warner, the Democratic Governor of Virginia, will be announcing his entry into. . . . Second Life.

Speculation has been going on for the last month or so about who would be the first politician to open shop in Second Life. I honestly didn’t expect this to happen for a while, but it’s just a testament to the ability of Second Life to astonish me. Hamlet covers the event and Governor Warner’s background really well here.

What I’d like to share are a few cool and surreal details form today as we scrambled to get ready for the event. In politics, image is everything, right? Well, there we were, constructing the avatar for a man we’d never met face to face, tweaking pixels and complaining about SL’s avatar creation tools. We’d send a screenshot over and hear back fro the folks at Forward Together, Warner’s PAC, things like, “His head looks too small” and the like. And then we realized, we’re sitting here tweaking the avatar of the man who could be our next president. . . . .

Other fun details included rehearsing the grand entrance with Warner’s team and debating whether it would be more appropriate to walk into the Globe or fly. You can guess which way I voted. Anyhow, totally exhausted, but looking forward to tomorrow and the months ahead — join us at the New Globe and in the new Forward Together group in Second Life. The town hall has gone digital!

Hot off the presses, thanks to the machinimistic stylings of AngryBeth Shortbread. (FYI, the original play featured typed dialogue — we elected to add voice in post-production because we weren’t going to show the whole play and its just easier to follow this way)

Click here for video.

Top 10 Coolest things about the first live performance play in Second Life.

From my point of view, three hours after the event

10. The audience was quiet!
9. Scene/Costume changes were done with a large curtain that came down over the entire stage.
8. The set design has this retro-murder look to it.
7. There is a mention of gopher killing.
6. This play was put together in less than one month.
5. The previous Shakespeare props weren’t off the stage for final rehearsal until two days before.
4. When we opened up the sim, Millions of Us, it filled over capacity within minutes.
3. The crowd insisted on TWO encores!
2. You could watch the play from anywhere! Watch it from the actors point of view!
1. This may be the first live play, but from today’s performance, it won’t be the last.
-Chris

Too tired and inspired to write much more than that after nearly a month of anticipation, the play that was performed was . . . . .highly entertaining.  We had a full house and the very idea of sitting here in a virtual theatre in a virtual world with people from around the real world is just mind-blowing.  As for the cast and crew, they could very well have all been on different continents which is just stunning.

Three weeks ago we announced the Millions of Us Challenge to create and perform a play in Second Life. Tonight is the night and I’m proud (and relieved) to say that folks have risen to the challenge.

As I said originally, the reason we’re doing this is because of how symbolic it is of the entire metaverse movement on so many levels. First and foremost, Second Life is about allowing people to try on different identies. The power of the medium is that it gives us the ability to turn dreams into reality and to share those dreams with others. But almost equally important is that doing a play in Second Life just happens to be very challenging. So tonight will be a celebration of that shared struggle to do things not despite the challenge, but in some cases, because of it. And when you think about it, Second Life itself would not exist if people hadn’t embraced that very same sort of challenge and pushed the envelope.

The show will begin with our feature performance of “From the Shadows”, an original play written by Enjah Mysterio and directed by Osprey Thereian. Following this, we’ll have a more free-form sort of fun where we invite folks to come on stage and tell a joke. We’ll be giving a prize not only to the cast of the play but also to the “Best SL Joke”.

For sim access, please IM Green Fate.

See you at the theatre! (It’s in the New Globe Theatre in the Millions of Us sim)

Wow!