Macbeth
Teatro La Fenice (2022)
Art Direction — Scenic Design — Real-time
William Shakespeare's Macbeth. Teatro La Fenice, Senigallia (2022).
The first collaboration between the Digital Experience Lab held by Daniele Tabellini at UNIRSM Design and the Classical Theatre Lab of Liceo Perticari directed by Giorgio Sebastianelli. The starting point for what became a multi-year research into live digital scenography for classical theatre.
Four student groups developed concept research and generative sketches in p5.js, each working on one invisible layer of Shakespeare's tragedy: magic, intimacy, madness, violence. The live performance system and the core visual architecture were built by Daniele, with students contributing research, prototypes and scene-specific sketches performed live during the show.
The four layers read as a colour system: green for the witches' magnetic attraction, eyes orbiting invisible attractors; blue for the private, encrypted language of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, two custom typefaces generated through pixel-mapping, one legible, one not; yellow for madness, slit-scan video filtered to high-contrast black and white, sourced from Buñuel, Duchamp, Pasolini, Pink Floyd; red for violence, audio-reactive triangles that cut the screen, physics-driven and timed to murders the production chose not to show.
Machine learning appeared here: PoseNet for real-time eye recognition in the witches' sketches, CharRNN trained on the full Macbeth script for generative text in the intimacy layer.
About the Lab
Each production is the final project of the Digital Experience Lab, a semester-long course in the Master's Degree in Interaction & Experience Design at UNIRSM Design. Starting from a brief on making the invisible visible, students learn to research, design and direct complex open source projects, approaching generative design, creative coding and machine learning from a designer's perspective, with the methods of a creative technologist, art director and artist. The final project is not a prototype: it is a live performance in a real theatre, where the scenography they built runs in front of an audience. All tools and documentation are released as open source on GitHub.
Poster
Docs and Source Code
Credits
Scenic Design
Art Direction: Daniele Tabellini
Collaboration: Irene Trotta
Scenography: students from the Master's Degree in Interaction & Experience Design at the University of the Republic of San Marino
Tech: P5.js / Live visuals
Students: Magia Verde: Andrea Ingrando (@andre-ing), Chiara Guiducci (@guiduc), Arianna Terenzi (@ariannater), Michele Tunzi (@MicheleTunzi) / Intimità Blu: Matteo Cirillo (@cllomatt24), Massimiliano Iob (@massimilianoiob), Stefania Papa (@StefaniaPapa), Salvo Pitingaro (@salpit) / Follia Gialla: Irene Bacherotti (@Irebache), Chiara Boffa (@chrbff), Alessia Ciccone (@alessiaciccone), Alessia Fallarino (@alessiafll) / Violenza Rossa: Lucrezia Ghinassi (@lcrzghns), Barbara Merlino (@barbaramerlino), Sofia Montanari (@Sofia Montanari), Alessandro Ricciardo (@Alessandro Ricciardo)
Text
Directed by Giorgio Sebastianelli
Performed by students from the Classical Theatre Lab of the G. Perticari State Classical High School (Senigallia, IT)
Choreography: Paola Piccioni
Costume Design: M.C. Mazzaferri
Collaboration: M. Bellocchi
Coordination: I. Antonietti
Images
2000–2026© Daniele Tabellini and Erika Gabbani / All rights reserved except where otherwise stated. / Tutti i diritti riservati eccetto dove specificato diversamente.