Andy Thompson is a purist when it comes to George Orwell's work. But he's long been an adventurist when it comes to presenting stories in tech-savvy ways.

That's why Thompson's adaptation of Orwell's prophetic novel 1984 will be a massive multimedia production that incorporates video projections for shadings and texture and live and prerecorded video on 13 high-definition flat screens.

The TV screens will animate the surveillance tools of the government in Orwell's dystopian world in the stage production of 1984, which runs March 24 to April 3 at the Cultch.

"This particular story requires that the telescreen be a real and palpable and frightening character in the story," said Thompson, the artistic and managing director of The Virtual Stage theatre company. "I was not only excited about the idea of doing this novel on stage, but also the idea of bringing this character to life."

Thompson performed in the Electric Company Theatre's first show a few years after he graduated from Langara college's Studio 58 in 1993. He was impressed and envious that his peers had managed to spark their own company and considered what his own niche could be.

"[I] realized that I'm a bit of a techno geek," Thompson said. "I, at one point, was going to be an engineer and I'm really interested in left brain and right brain activity and realized that I could be quite interested in emerging technologies and how we could use those in theatre."

He pitched ideas for cinematic shows to local theatre companies with little success.

"A lot of the responses I got were people who basically scoffed," Thompson said.

So in 2000 he started The Virtual Stage, which focuses on incorporating technologies including computer animation, cinematic projection and digital sound to tell stories, with its first mainstage show in 2001.

No Exit, a multiple award-winning co-production of The Virtual Stage and Electric Company Theatre that premiered in 2008, features hidden cameras that turn the stage into a cinema with three slightly offstage performances and live film feeds.

Thompson will tour with No Exit, which is an adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre's classic existential play, to San Francisco before the run of 1984 ends.

Theatre purists no longer scoff at combining elements of film with theatre, he says. "You're not seeing the debate anymore."

Thompson is interested in working with holographic image (virtual 3D images made with multiple projectors) and fog screens (screens of water vapour that can be walked through) in the future.

The Virtual Stage and Langara College's Studio 58 are co-producing 1984. Thompson says it's a production of "superlatives." It's The Virtual Stage's biggest production, which features the largest set the show's technical director has ever built and one of the hugest sets The Cultch has ever seen. Ron Jenkins, the renowned and multi-award winning director of The Black Rider and Bash'd leads a cast of 27 with Alex Ferguson (The Cat Who Ate Her Husband) and Andrew Wheeler (Studies in Motion).

Thompson believes the 63-year-old novel about a state where Big Brother is watching resonates only too well today. He points to the proliferation of surveillance cameras and the numbing power of the media.

"We've got a media culture right now that's so flashy and well produced and slick in its design that people are more focused on what's going on with Justin Bieber's hair than looking towards solutions to some of our problems in our own democracy," Thompson said.

While his adaptation of 1984 aims to be innovative and slick, Thompson says he stuck as close to the source material as he could when he tailored the story for the stage.

"It's an Orwell show," Thompson said, "Like what would Orwell want here?"

For more information, see thecultch.com.

crossi@vancourier.com

Twitter: @Cheryl_Rossi