When the Plaintext Players began their journey into the world of cyberformance , they worked primarily in the text-based online environments known as MOOs . LaFarge would devise a detailed scenario which would be communicated to the actors or " participants " beforehand . The pieces would then be constructed through live improvisation under LaFarge 's direction . Two early examples of this were their " Gutter City " ( 1995 ) and " LittleHamlet " ( 1995 ) . In " Gutter City , " they told the tale of what happened to Ishmael , from '' Moby-Dick '' , when he became involved in the Civil War after his rescue ; and in " LittleHamlet " they retold the story of Shakespeare 's '' Hamlet '' but attempted to show " all of the characters ' formerly unspoken needs , fears , and desires . " Starting in 1998 , in collaboration with theater director Robert Allen , they began bridging between virtual and real spaces , bringing theater actors to work with the online material in various ways . Initially , LaFarge adapted online transcripts for stage and radio performance ; the first of these was " Still Lies Quiet Truth " , a 1998 adaptation of the 1996 online series known as " The Candide Campaign " that was performed at the New York International Fringe Festival . Locations from the characters ' virtual world were projected on screen in synch with the performance , showing where the characters were at any given moment . After this , the Players began experimenting with performances in which live feeds allowed the online performers to improvise in real time with the stage actors . These live feeds ranged from text projections to audio synthesized from text , and the stage actors responded to these feeds in various ways . In addition , all of the information being circulated between the online and stage performers in the form of audio , video , and text streams was subject to further transformations through computer programming . The Plaintext Players ' departure from purely text-based performance was enabled by the growing availability of multimedia technologies , and in line with their aesthetic of mediated improvisation . As a group they have been largely inactive since 2006 , although individual members have pursued cyberformance in other venues
New York International Fringe Festival
New York International Fringe Festival
Plaintext Players