Desktop Theatre

In the Desktop Theatre version of this performance, Jenik and Brenneis fashioned two simple “roundhead” avatars (similar to IM smiley face emoticons) to play the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, now nicknamed “didi” and “gogo.” This online performance, which Jenik and Brenneis call “Street theater for the new Downtown,” is presented in a cut-and-paste fashion in which the actors take portions of Beckett’s text and paste it into their chat window. The text then appears instantly above their respective avatar in a comic book style text bubble. All of the chatted dialogue presented in The Palace appears in these bubbles, thus clearly associating dialogue with the avatar producing the dialogue. The dialogue is also “spoken” through the software’s text-to-speech capabilities simultaneous to its display on the screen.