OARC’s Research Data and Web Platforms group collaborated with Jeff Burke and the UCLA Department of Theater’s Ray Bolger Musical Theater Program on an immersive production of Xanadu, a 2007 roller-disco musical comedy. The show ran for seven performances and welcomed over 500 guests. Audience members used mobile gestures to create visuals on 13-by-9-foot LED screens or “shrines.” It was processed in real time with AWS Generative AI to produce 2D images and 3D meshes integrated into the digital scenery.
Working alongside the production team, the Research Data and Web Platforms group developed the AWS microservices and Generative AI pipelines that processed the images rendered on the screens. The result was a groundbreaking stage performance during which audience members participated in the live synthesis of Generative AI-rendered visual elements. It was also a novel use case of using cloud-based GPU clusters for immersive performance.
- Book by Douglas Carter Beane
- Music & Lyrics by Jeff Lynne & John Farrar
- Directed by Mira Winick & Corey Wright
- Produced by Jeff Burke
- Images credit by M. Yepez, M. Beymer, M. Winick, and K. Liu.
Project Collaborators
OARC Project Team
OARC Groups Supporting this Project
Citation
Boussema, C., N. Agarwal, C. Vargas, M. Wilson, A. Doolan, A. Browning, M. Winick, J. Burke. “Case Study: Xanadu Generative Media Pipelines for Immersive Participatory Theater,” Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment (AIIDE), University of Alberta, Canada, November, 2025.
Singh, A., Browning, A., Doolan, A., Boussema, C., Burke, J., Ronquillo, J., Dasari, L., and Agarwal, N., “University of California Los Angeles delivers an immersive theater experience with AWS generative AI services,” November, 2025