Hippolytus (in the Arms of Aphrodite)| A conversation with the director, Yolanda Markopoulou

Hippolytus (in the Arms of Aphrodite) is an AR live performance developed for the Augmented Theatre use case of VOXReality, directed by Yolanda Markopoulou. The work experiments with AR headsets to merge stage action, visual effects, and soundscapes into a single experience where the storytelling unfolds both physically and digitally. It was produced as a 15-minute performance, engaging the artistic, dramaturgical, and technical functions of theatre rather than being treated as a technology demo.

Director Yolanda Markopoulou is an Athens-based director, producer, and creator of works that combine theatre, film, public space, and immersive media. Her projects often test how audiences move between real and imagined environments, challenging the conventional separation between performer and spectator.

Her exploration of XR began with White Dwarf (2022), a 360° VR project that placed viewers inside the Manhattan Project laboratory and showed how virtual environments can alter theatrical language. In Hippolytus (in the Arms of Aphrodite) she continued this exploration through AR, working with live and digital layers to create a unique theatre experience.

Exploring XR in Theatre – What inspires creative exploration into XR technologies in theatre?

Markopoulou explains that every XR project in theatre almost begins from zero. There are few existing models to draw on, which for her is an opportunity: “This is very positive, because you can start fresh and your imagination takes the lead.”

In traditional theatre the audience sits still, watching from one perspective. XR alters that condition: spectators remain in the same room but gain mobility, and digital environments are created around them. “They can stay in the same location, but they feel they are transported somewhere else because of the environment change.”

She describes this as working with new means of immersion: “You put the audience into different locations, into different lighting situations, sound situations, and your story develops through this kind of immersion.”

In what ways does AR differ from earlier experiments with VR, both on a creative and a technical level?

Markopoulou’s first steps into XR media were through VR using headsets, an enclosed format that placed audiences inside a virtual world. “With VR you actually close all your vision through the headset. You cannot really see the physical world,” she notes. The experience taught her the basics of presence and movement inside a virtual space, but it also highlighted how completely the headset separated the spectator from the stage.

AR altered that relationship. The Magic Leap headset is lighter and more open, keeping the physical world in view while adding digital elements on top. “You could see the physical world just with a filter, so you still felt connected to what was happening around you. It’s like you have a small screen in front of your eyes that you move around with, uncovering the world in fragments.”

AR is also unique in the way the actors themselves are able to work since they perform without being able to see the overlays themselves. “Everything had to be precisely coordinated. We relied on cues in light and sound, and with the VOXReality technologies the actors could also trigger changes in the environment around them to drive the story forward”.

What new possibilities do XR technologies open up for theatre as a medium?

For Markopoulou, XR opens new ways of working with immersion. “In XR performances the audience doesn’t just watch a story, they enter it, moving through changing environments of imagery, light and sound where the narrative unfolds.” Digital layers allow these shifts to happen inside a single performance space, giving theatre an expanded dramaturgical vocabulary.

Developing Hippolytus (in the Arms of Aphrodite) showed how AR pushes theatre into new territory, where even constraints become part of the vocabulary; a clear example of the medium as a space of exploration. “The restricted field of view encouraged audiences to move their head and body to uncover digital elements. We decided to use this feature to our advantage, turning perception itself into an active, personal process,” she notes. Sound was treated the same way: using headset audio would have been disruptive for other viewers and the actors, while headphones would restrict movement. Thus the team designed a surround system that would be free of these restrictions. “We divided the soundscape into different moments, directions, and volumes to make the experience as immersive as possible and leave the audience free to move in the space.”

Markopoulou also emphasizes accessibility as a vital aspect of XR’s potential. “I think this is a huge advantage, you don’t exclude people that don’t understand the performance’s language. With XR technology and services like those developed in VOXReality, audiences can experience theatre in multiple languages, which can make the performance much more inclusive.”

At the same time, the work on Hippolytus underlined the gap between the theatre industry and XR hardware manufacturers. “High costs and limited computing power still set boundaries, you cannot restart the performance, as you would do in a film. For XR to move further into theatre practices and unleash its full potential in the medium, technology will need to develop in closer dialogue with artists”.

What was the conceptual starting point for Hippolytus (in the Arms of Aphrodite)?

In approaching Euripides’ Hippolytus for AR, Markopoulou wanted to craft a performance that was short and experimental, while still rooted in myth. “It was a complex process where many people from different backgrounds worked together to find creative solutions for technical and artistic considerations. The headset itself set the basis for our work. Realistically we had approximately 15–20 minutes of action,” Markopoulou explains, “of course you cannot condense a full play in that time but we wanted the audience to have a full experience, not just watch an excerpt. This is how the idea of Hippolytus (in the arms of Aphrodite) was born.”

In the play, two actors, Hippolytus and Aphrodite, perform for two spectators, who witness the story at close range. “You feel very intimately involved once you enter the space and suddenly you realize that you’re in an audience of two and the action takes place right in front of you, without the usual distance between the spectator and the stage”. At times the closeness felt almost overwhelming: “People are not used to having actors playing a meter away or touching them or being close to them.”

The dramaturgy was built around this intimacy. “We started by building the action with the actors before we completed the virtual world. That way, we could see what was needed”, she recalls “Digital elements were added in rehearsal to extend or redirect what happened on stage. The overlays could conceal gestures, highlight others, or shift the audience’s attention, creating a constant dialogue between the physical and the digital, sometimes giving more space to the virtual, other times to the live action.”

In the same fashion, the development of the performance was a dialogue between artistic vision and the possibilities and limits of the technology. “We had to take many factors into account: headset performance, overheating, lighting, sound, subtitle placement, and pacing. Our goal was to maximize what was possible and give the audience as much freedom as we could, surrounding them with digital scenography that encouraged them to explore, look up, down, and around, and experience the potential of AR theatre to the fullest. It was a challenge, but we had a strong team and crucial support from the VOXReality project Maggioli Group, our technology partner, as well as from AEF.”