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I took off my shoes to enter the theater hall. My glasses too. The shoes were part of the ritual, but it turned out to be so coffinan augmented reality theater piece performed at The Shed in New York City, is used Magic jump 2 glasses. This does not work with my prescription. I put my contact lenses in the bathroom before the show.
In a carpeted room with dozens of people sitting, she placed tethered augmented reality glasses. And so did everyone else. We sat together as hologram artists, including famous actor Ian McKellen, posed around us.
The Ark is an experience described as “the first play created for mixed reality.” I’ve seen augmented reality experiences In immersive shows before that, which I would call plays of sorts. But An Ark’s roughly 50-minute runtime is probably the longest I’ve spent continuously on a Magic Leap 2 headset. In the end, the glasses felt a little warm on my nose. I was ready to take them off.
My colleague Bridget Carey and I attended An Ark, which runs at The Shed until April 4, on a bitterly cold day a few weeks ago. I’m still thinking about it. The experience was disturbing. Passionate but cool. It felt like we were attending a live theatrical event, yet there were no live actors at all.
The hallways and walls invite you into the An Ark experience, preparing you for how to wear a headset.
What does this mean for the future of physical theatre? I definitely don’t want the live actors to leave. I don’t think that’s the intent of this play either. The whole experience is presented as a memorial-like meditation in the liminal space after death.
Four (virtual) chairs appear in front of me in a semicircle, and one by one the volumetrically captured actors appear. McKellen, Golda Rosheuvel, Arinze Kane, and Rosie Sheehy are hypnotizing as actors who feel as if they are sitting right in front of me. It’s eye contact, as Bridget told me later. Also, it’s the sense of how they’re all fighting for your attention.
My field of vision on the glasses is only wide enough for two of the four chairs. I turn my head back and forth to see what others are doing. The actors talk to me, just to me, look into my eyes, relay their stories: Do they know me? Do I know them?
Everyone in the stage space feels as if these four actors are sitting across from them. It is a simultaneous illusion. But I cannot see what everyone else sees: I only see them sitting in a semicircle in front of me. This multiplicity may seem strange, but it works here. It ends up feeling like we’re all witnessing together.
We also share the same ambient sound. Halfway through I realized that the sound of the entire room I was hearing, their presence there with me, was also there for everyone else. At least, I think we are. I’m sure we are.
I had to take off my glasses and put my contact lenses in. Look closely, and you can barely see the virtual chairs I see in the Magic Leap 2 headset’s lenses.
Why did it feel so deep…and messy
Even in 2026, I haven’t seen many moments where augmented reality becomes an alternative to reality. Augmented reality glasses face a challenge that hasn’t been addressed yet: How do you make a virtual experience you see in the real world mesh safely and comfortably with everyone else who’s also there, who may not be seeing exactly the same thing in their glasses?
Compounding the issue is that AR glasses aren’t something most people have much experience with. Mixed reality headsets such as Apple Vision Prothe Samsung Galaxy XR The current line is for Meta Quest Headphones can create a mixed reality that appears to be in your own space with you, but no one is wearing them in public.
It was a magical leap Early innovator Trying to achieve augmented reality things. The producer of this show, Todd Eckert, was a former head of content development at Magic Leap.
He has produced two other Magic Leap hardware-powered theatrical experiences in the past: The Life (in an art installation featuring Marina Abramović) and Kagami (an AR music piece made by Ryuichi Sakamoto). The ship feels like an extension of the idea and challenges us to think about how the virtual show would be accepted by real actors. It’s a kind of inversion of the current moment: while artificial intelligence sends us many videos of artificially created people, here I saw a virtual display of a very real representation. I felt the difference.
Creating a closed theatrical event for shared moments like The Ark is a step in the right direction. But I also don’t know if, over time, this kind of experience will still be interesting when the novelty of AR glasses is lost. As I looked around, I felt like there were people trying out techniques they had never used before. As I exited the 45-minute show and headed out the door to retrieve our stored shoes, I felt like I had stepped out of a ritual.
Can’t I do this at home instead? Yes, but would I feel the same way, alone in my crowded space without the joy of sharing it with others? That’s the thing. While this $45, 45-minute show required me to travel to the West Side of Manhattan on a cold evening, it also made me feel lonely by default. We’re still not in a world where most people have the hardware to make this happen, let alone all come together to use it together.
But it was also the performances, watched from an intimate distance, that made an impact. I’ve trained with Meta Quest’s holographic instructors, but it’s refreshing to see this kind of virtual presence in a clean, uncluttered space designed to receive it.
I would love it more if I somehow didn’t have to bring my own contact lenses, but that’s the reality of smart glasses at the moment. Very few smart glasses are made to support all types of prescriptions, and many do not fit over glasses. Performance did provide medical inserts to help people, but only up to -5. Bridget’s recipe-6 couldn’t be completely matched either.
My “I’m in a real play” senses are activated, even though there are no real actors there.
And then, strangely, a hunger for reality
But what An Ark did was make me feel grounded in an experience in a real place. I remember being in that room, seeing people. Take off my shoes. Feeling present.
And in the show itself, when the four actors – perhaps angels or spirits between the worlds of life and death – began to share memories of the lives they once lived, ones that blended, melted and represented many people, I also perhaps felt as if a message had been conveyed to me. I walked through the door, and walked out of the show happy to be alive, and happy to have made the trip somewhere to see theater — even without the actors. Was that the whole idea? Maybe the ark is made of us.
I’ve found myself thinking more about the real world as I delve into personal wearable technology that attempts to connect and transform the world around me. The real world is stable, tangible, and rich. I want you to pay attention to that. The ship allowed me to do that while also being virtual, which is magic in itself.