RED was a low-budget, low-poly immersive theatre piece for children, marking Brandy Butler’s directorial debut at Theatre Neumark Zurich. The concept, co-created with Bendix Fesefeldt, envisions the forest as a virtual space. RED offers a modern twist on Little Red Riding Hood, utilizing the forest (Wald) as a metaphor to depict the vast and potentially dangerous virtual world of the internet and social media. In this adaptation, Red, portrayed by Luka Dimić, is a nonbinary 13-year-old who opens a window to this forest through a smartphone received from their grandmother. Through this window, Red encounters the wolf, a terrifying symbol of cyber-grooming, also played by Luka Dimić.

The challenge of conceptualizing and visualizing a virtual world based on this story in a short amount of time was exhilarating. The wolf’s avatar, a pre-made motion captured avatar, operates on a same coding system that I created my avatar breathe with. As the 3D animations explore various perspectives of the story, such as the wolf stalking Red on TikTok, or dancing, I had to recreate the wolf avatar and its iconic RED leather jacket. You can download the jacket as an OBJ file here.