Rory Willats is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar working with performance, installation, interactive media, movement, and community. His practice conjures hybrid bodies by staging the consonances and dissonances between bodily capacity and information technologies.

From interactive VR installations hung from 27’ pendulums to one-man performances and grand opera, Rory locates these alternate configurations within a mediated ecology to reflect and interrogate the hybridized landscape of our experience. His work has been seen on stages, screens, and galleries around the US, UK, and Europe.

CURRENT RESEARCH:

• Masculine social ritual in virtual communities
• VR performance for audiences across virtual and contiguous space
• Acting pedagogy for hybrid performance

Willats is a current member of the Lucille Lortel’s Alcove Dramaturgy and Directors Cohort and a former member of the UCSC Digital Arts and New Media: Future Stages Lab under the guidance of Marianne Weems.