So, What’s a Realto?

A realto (rē-ǎl-tō) is a new form of live, digital, visual storytelling. In a realto a special camera system captures a live actor or narrator who is performing onstage. Then, in realtime, the system digitally inserts the actor as a “live” character into a visual story that is being simultaneously rear-projected on two screens flanking the stage.

The projected realto “live movie” is automatically recorded and can be streamed to online viewers in realtime or replayed later.

The essence of a realto, however, is the live electronic theater experience. This is where live actor and live realto audience create an intimate connection, where precise timing is make or break, and where the whole back-and-forth tension between live and “unlive,” between real and unreal, is palpable.

Comprising the realto electronic theater are five main physical components: (1) a digital green screen stage; (2) projection screens and projectors; (3) camera booms; (4) digital stage lights; (5) computer rig.

The realto actor-performer (called the “sayer”) performs live on the digital green screen stage. Flanking the live sayer are two rear projection screens. Presented on the screens, closely synchronized to the sayer’s performance, are previously recorded audio-visualizations of “the story.”

The magic happens when the live sayer steps onto the greenscreen stage before her live audience (in realto terminology, “the seers”). From that moment going forward, she is inserted as a live element into the screen projections, as a “live” story character, thus creating a totally new story segment that is also simultaneously recorded.

As such, the realto form lends itself naturally to segmented, serialized, layered storytelling. The newly recorded “live cinema” projection can subsequently become the projected backdrop (“tableau”) for a future live onstage segment, and so on.

For example. the sayer can have a live dialog with her previous self. She simply records herself in a live realto segment mise en scene. Then she uses this segment as the projected tableau for the next live realto segment. An example is here.

A realto is a new hybrid, live-and-digital, performative-and-immersive, storytelling format. It is both its live onstage performance and its simultaneous “live cinema” projection. The dramatic tension between the two, between the onstage actor and her onscreen double, asks the realto audience to question what is real and what is not.

See the related post “MMRK: the concept of live cinema” for Mauro Frugiuele’s thoughts on his new fascination with live cinema.