Second Life is part of a presentation at the Burlington Performing Arts CentreI (Burlington ON, L7S 1T7). The performance calendar describes it this way:

Tottering Biped @ Burlington Performing Arts Centre – Oct 2015

The online virtual world of ‘Second Life’ stretches thousands of kilometers and millions of visitors. While searching for her lost sister, Jessica struggles to find out what – and who – are real. Life and its double are at stake in this multi-media exploration of loss in the digital age. The Second Life was devised by the company through workshops with light, movement, and text over a four-year period. The Second Life explores the increasingly fluid relationship between the real, the digital and the spiritual.

Gary Smith of the The Hamilton Spectator says:

“If you are interested in the new face of theater Second Life is a must see drama that explores a dark and disturbing world of  cyberspace. A tense provocative evening of theatre, Trevor Copp’s drama  is a lethal, riveting look at a world rocking on the edge of frightening discoveries that will threaten your sleep at night.”

Gary seems to be spinning the review to build interest in the presentation. As best I can tell those attending the presentation will not be seeing into Second Life™, but they may. The promotional video is below.

It seems this presentation is a writer/artist’s interpretation of what could happen in the mix of real life and Second Life. Maybe a Second Life resident in Ontario will see the show and give us their thoughts. My guess would be the writer has little idea of what SL is and a vague idea of how people use it. But, as artists do the author probably uses the ideas they have to build an entertaining story and it may be awesomely told.

My experience is that people will assume what is portrayed in such a story as accurate. Unfortunately, that is not likely the case. I don’t see it as the Tottering Biped Theatre’s  (the dance troupe [?] creating the performance ) duty to accurately portray SL. Their job is to tell a story well. The unfortunate point is that people will adopt the portrayal, bent with artistic license to tell a story, as accurate. I am assuming the story is bent toward the dramatic and away from the accurate.

The Second Life residents seeing the performance will recognize any dramatic distortions and may complain to the writer/creator. They essentially ignore the framework of what is happening and focus on their interest.

That is life. Kehidupan adalah konflik …