DEMO
Daria Tsoupikova*, Sai Priya Jyothula*, Arthur Nishimoto*, Jo Cattell**, Lance Long*, Andrew Johnson*
*University of Illinois Chicago
**Kaleidoko
Hummingbird is an award-winning interdisciplinary VR performance that merges live theater with collaborative, participatory storytelling. Developed through a partnership among computer science and design faculty, students and theater professionals, the production employs a distinctive co-located structure: five active participants and a live actor, all wearing VR headsets , collaborate in real time, while a wider audience follows the narrative on video walls. At its core, Hummingbird is a coming-of-age story that grants participants genuine agency, drawing on problem-solving, teamwork, and shared narrative construction. The project reconceptualizes audience engagement and narrative structure by integrating principles from immersive theater, digital performance, and gaming.
Hummingbird has been performed at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Children's Theater, and the Immersive Pavilion in Vancouver, reaching over 500 audience members. Hummingbird offers a replicable model for hybrid VR theater and contributes actionable design principles and tools for interdisciplinary production, demonstrating how this medium can extend the boundaries of traditional theater, making immersive storytelling more accessible.