When the world shut down during Covid-19 lockdown, South African artist and worldbuilder Rick Treweek found himself thinking about something increasingly difficult to achieve: being together.
From a flat in Johannesburg he began building a place where people could once again stand beside one another, even if they were thousands of kilometres apart.
Six years later, that virtual world has taken him all the way to Los Angeles.
Treweek, who grew up in Kokstad in KwaZulu-Natal and now lives in Kommetjie in the Western Cape, is heading to the Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards after "Uncanny Alley: A New Day" was nominated for Outstanding Emerging Media Program.
The virtual reality theatre production, set in his original digital universe, is one of just three nominees in the category at the 78th Primetime Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The awards is taking place on Saturday, September 5, at the Peacock Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles.
It is competing against Blumhouse's "Enhanced Cinema" and "The World of Fallout".
Treweek wrote on social media: "Six years ago I was locked down in a flat in Johannesburg, building a virtual back alley in the metaverse. I'd read 'Ready Player One' and couldn't shake the idea of a world you could actually walk into. Then the country shut, everyone I knew was suddenly far away, and I had characters with nowhere to live. So I built them somewhere. I called it 'Uncanny Alley'. There was no plan. It wasn't a business. It was a way to get through that year.
"On Saturday, September 5, a production set in that universe is up for a Primetime Emmy. It's called 'Uncanny Alley: A New Day' — a live VR theatre show made with an incredible company in Los Angeles called Ferryman Collective VR.
"Two actors play fifteen characters, live, in real time, inside the world. It's nominated for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Creative Arts Emmy Awards. The other two nominees are backed by giants Amazon, Meta, NBCUniversal and Bethesda. We're two small companies. I’m pretty excited about that."
He created "Uncanny Alley" during lockdown. Unable to gather in person, he built a place where people could stand next to one another again, a cyberpunk back alley of the internet.
In the production, audiences become escaped detainees fleeing Adaptive Learning Industries, a corporation preparing to erase its citizens’ memories.
Two professional actors perform 15 characters live and in real time, while audience members become active participants in the story. They must escape imprisonment, evade capture and ultimately decide whether to abandon "Uncanny Alley" or stay and fight for their home.
Treweek had gone in search of a way to keep people genuinely together while the physical world was off-limits.
"You put on a headset, and suddenly presence is real again. Eye lines. Body language. Leaning in to hear better. The strange, human intimacy of standing next to someone who is nine thousand kilometres away. Or the feeling of being annoyed with someone who’s too close to you, you know? VR is incredibly powerful and it’s incredibly intimate," said Treweek.
He said a friend showed him a sci-fi world and suddenly everything clicked.
"A lot of VRChat felt like a room or a bar. I wanted to know if I could build something that felt like a universe," he said.
His first narrative experience in the universe, "The Search for Gh0st", was selected for Venice VR Expanded in 2021 and went on to win the Spirit of Raindance Award in 2022.
Then, in 2024, Treweek and Ferryman Collective, a Los Angeles-based non-profit VR theatre company, began discussing the possibility of bringing live theatre into the world he had created.
Rather than stage the show in the existing world, Virtual Worlds Company built an entirely new one for the production: more than 30 environments, engineered to run on standalone Meta Quest headsets.
Ferryman founders Stephen Butchko and Deirdre V. Lyons wrote and directed the immersive theatre experience.
Ferryman technical director Christopher Lane Davis, who works as Screaming Color, contributed original visual effects and music, as well as helping to control the live show.
“Ferryman brought something to the Alley I could not have built on my own: live performance.
“The most extraordinary part of this for me has been watching actors step inside characters I had drawn and lived with for years, and give them a voice and a body in real time. They walk into that world night after night and make it breathe. What I brought was the universe. This nomination belongs to both halves of that, and it would not exist without either,” he said.
"Uncanny Alley: A New Day" premiered in competition at Venice Immersive 2024, where it won the Fanheart3 XR Fan Experience Award.
It has since been presented at SXSW (So, Raindance Immersive, NewImages Festival, Augmented World Expo and SIGGRAPH, winning the XR Immersive Award at Kaohsiung Film Festival in Taiwan and Gold at the XRMust Awards, among other accolades.
Treweek’s route into immersive technology began far from Silicon Valley or Hollywood.
He said growing up in Kokstad he only got a computer for the first time when he was more of an adult.
"That is probably why I do what I do. Because it was so alien, I still have so much curiosity. And it's definitely an industry for the curious right now,” he said.
Treweek added that his entire life he has been on a quest to see how he could bring his characters to life.
That journey began with animation, when he landed his first job at South African animation studio Triggerfish.
"Rotoscoping wasn’t for me but I learnt the basics of animation: I could see my character."
From there, his experiments moved through increasingly interactive forms.
In the early 2000s, he helped make a mobile phone game, which prompted another question: “Can I interact with my character?”
Then came another: “Can we give it a brain?”
That led to an interest in bringing characters into the physical world through 3D printing, followed by mechatronics and attempts to make those characters move.
"Then VRChat came along, and now I could be inside my character, and look at myself in a mirror."
He said theatre felt like the next iteration of his characters coming to life.
"Because now there are actors actually acting and taking on these personalities, and it’s like they’re completely rogue and I have zero control over who they become. There’s something very magical about that," he said.
taschica.pillay@nationalmg.co.za