SLSC/Koinup Photo Contest

SL Shakespeare Company’s Twelfth Night, Act 1
Photography Contest on Koinup

Shakespeare, Second Life and Brescia, Italy: The SL Shakespeare Company joins forces with Koinup to launch the world’s first major photography contest featuring a professional theatrical production based entirely in the virtual world of Second Life. Starting March 1, the contest invites participants to attend the SL Shakespeare Company’s open-ended run of Twelfth Night, Act 1 and take photos. Over L$100,000 in prizes will be awarded to the winners.

The contest consists of a main contest whose final submissions deadline is June 15, 2009. Several mini-contests with weekly or bi-monthly deadlines and prizes will be held starting in April. These mini-contests will be held in conjunction with several “Variations” on the open-ended run, where, for example, an all-female or switched-genders cast interpretation is tried.
To give all participants a chance, the contest introduces a special “Unedited SL Photography” category with its own exclusive prize.
The contest also has a special Avatar Photography category for photography that focus particularly on actor avatars. To help facilitate this specialized component, the SL Shakespeare Company will be holding special actor avatar photography sessions starting in April.

In efforts to recognize photography based not only on artistic merit but also on their appeal to different people, the contest will be judged by a panel of well-known Second Life residents from several different arenas. Judges include AM Radio, Ananda Valeeva, Beyers Sellers, Dana Vanmoer, Eshi Otawara, Frolic Mills, Ina Centaur, Jaymes Kjeller, Prad Prathivi, Rightasrain Rimbaud, Saffia Widdershins, Sarah Nerd, Tara05 Oh, Vint Falken, Verde Otaared, and others.

Shows occur weekly on Sundays at 1 PM PST and Tuesdays at 6 PM PST at the SL Globe Theatre. Performances are free except for shows on the last Tuesday and Sunday of each month. Donations are gratefully accepted.

About Twelfth Night, Act 1
Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is the story of a shipwrecked girl named Viola, who chooses to go incognito as a boy eunuch. Act 1 establishes the love triangle that Viola, Duke Orsino, and Olivia become entangled in, and also introduces some of Shakespeare’s most memorable characters—Malvolio and Feste. Unlike the Bard’s other plays, Twelfth Night exists only in the folio editions.

About the SL Shakespeare Company
The SL Shakespeare Company (SLSC) is a resident-funded and resident-supported professional theatre company that embraces the best of what Second Life (SL) has to offer. While it is primarily known to provide quality live Shakespearean theatre available to anyone in anywhere in the world, SLSC is also the curator of Second Life’s most historically accurate theatres and architecture relating to William Shakespeare.

About Koinup
Koinup is a media-based social networking platform geared specifically for virtual worlds. Koinup users submit and share photography and machinima to share their stories and art outside their virtual world. The Koinup website features many tools to help users present and syndicate their work, and is also a center for some of the most exciting photography contests in virtual worlds. Koinup currently helps share the following virtual worlds: Second Life, The Sims, World of Warcraft, IMVU, OpenSim, Lively, vSide, Kaneva, There, and Other Worlds.

SL Shakespeare SOS

Shakespeare, Second Life: Though hinted at on more than one occasion,
Ina Centaur yesterday officially announced the SL Shakespeare
Company's SOS "Save Our Sims" Fundraising Campaign—its purpose,
according to Centaur, is to meet "a modest though desperately needed
sum to pay land tier fees to Linden Lab." Through funding from
microeconomics a la a grid-wide network of donation kiosks, the "SOS"
campaign goal is to meet L$1.5 million by January 21, 2009, which at
the current LindeX rate for selling would translate to about USD$5300,
meeting six month's tier for three of the island sims that host the SL
Globe Theatre venue and similarly daring literary and artistic
projects. Centaur plans to fund the fourth sim through her own
endeavors, to keep the SL Globe Theatre four sims in size, as well as
to continue existing endeavors on the sims in trying to make the
enterprise self-sufficient.

At high noon on November 21st, Ina Centaur, Artistic Director of the
SL Shakespeare Company, greeted a small crowd of fans and supporters
at the SL Globe Theatre before launching a speech that revealed the
funding state of the Company, as well as some unexpected humanitarian
results of their endeavors. The Company's performances have reached
both those in rural areas and also low-income urban districts,
introducing many to the culture of theatre and Shakespearean
performances. Centaur summarized with the words, "Perhaps the greatest
thing that has evolved from our endeavors is that it has become a
truly humanitarian cause that we are fighting for—to bring theatre to
the farthest reaches of the world, to give Shakespeare to those who
would not have had the chance to experience his words in the live and
intimate form they were written for, to use this nascent medium to
bring the most quintessential culture to the metaverse and beyond."

Various donation kiosks are available for those who wish to help the
SL Shakespeare Company in their campaign. Supporters may drop by the
SL Globe Theatre or the Campaign headquarters, directly to obtain
copies of kiosks. The Campaign website contains up-to-the-second stats
and other information, as well as links to the inworld Campaign
headquarter to obtain kiosks http://campaign.SLshakespeare.com

Centaur explained that a 4-sim venue is a necessity for their shows,
"To make sure all can attend, and to minimize the lag." In addition,
the sims listed on the main SOS banners—sLiterary, Shakespeare, and
Primtings—also support several other notable literary and artistic
projects. Centaur stated the best way to find out about each is to
spend some time exploring the sims, or to visit their campaign website
above for brief summaries.

Although many may consider Centaur's activites to be merely great art,
after mentioning a few examples of lives their endeavors have touched,
she summarized their goal as of a greater significance, "Our goal is
to create good within Second Life for the world to thrive from—because
it is possible. We have been doing it, and we want to continue doing
it, but we won't be able to if we become homeless—we would have
neither the energy or the base to go from."

Centaur concluded the session with the haunting words, "You are our
last hope. If you can't help us, then I'm afraid to say we are truly
lost."

An unmistakably amazing experience in Second Life needs YOUR help

The SL Shakespeare Company announced in June it's 'Fourteen PIllars Fundraising Campaign" to raise funds for the companies future, including the full length production of Hamlet along with the bards other works.
Act 1 of the fourteen Pillars campaign opens on July 18th where seven actors will be jailed and made to "woo the audience with only improv acting and their wits" explains producer and director Enniv Zarf. Each actor will need to reach L$100,000 to be freed from their cell. A further $L300,000 will be raised by holding the beautifully crafted SL Globe Theatre to ransom. The building will be turned into a black box theatre during the first even building ransom to take place in SL. Artistic director and executive producer Ina Centaur states "We are truly what we say we are—a group of thespians and other professionals dedicated to our craft, bound together by Shakespeare, and way-too-excited to wait for outside funding".
The funds are needed for this revolutionary Second Life experience to help with actors time and running costs. Following the mini-production of Hamlet in March Sabina Stenvaag, managing director, explains “Scheduling was chaos, and we’ve even had to deal with some last minute re-casting before a show opened.” Co-executive producer and director Enniv Zarf agreed that, “The only way a full-length full-everything production would work is if we had everyone taking Second Life seriously, take their roles as a full time first life job for a month.”
The company provides a very unique experience for those in attendance. Shakespeare classics can be brought to life and witnessed from the comfort of your home computer but for this to continue the company needs your help.
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Primtings/9/211/121

By Trinity Dechou of REZ magazine