ATHEMOO

ATHEMOO was developed in conjunction with the Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and was designed originally under the auspices of providing a discussion space for people who were unable to attend conferences on the issues of performance theatre in the United States. Originally, ATHEMOO was designed so that all of the online open areas looked like a hotel lobby. At the time of ATHEMOO's establishment, there were over 2200 members of ATHE, half of whom were earning under $20,000 a year; it was therefore decided at the 1993 ATHE conference that ATHEMOO would be created to help all members discuss and learn from the ATHE conferences.

Although ATHEMOO was originally conceived as a discussion space, the creator realised its potential as a performative arena for the use and proliferation of online interactive performance. Audience members and any participants in a performance would be invited to visit the website at a time when the performance starts. Once the performance has started, the actors playing a role within the performance space in ATHEMOO exist both within the virtual and physical world, thus creating two simultaneous performances. In some cases, actors would meet in the physical world to rehearse work they would be performing in ATHEMOO.