Hours of psychological torment, heavy drinking of alcohol, prostitution and multiple
axe murders all feature in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s extraordinary nineteenth century
novel Crime and Punishment. The story has now been brought to the stage in a one-
of-a-kind musical creation that debuted at the Moscow Musical Theatre on March 17,
2016.

Russian-American filmmaker, Andrei Konchalovsky went to work on the production
in September 2014, calling it a “poly-genre fusion performance” as it uniquely
combines folklore, song, dramatic and operatic elements.

Adding to its appeal, the production uses key stage elements designed for
projection. These were custom designed by Moscow Musical Theatre’s technical
partner, Polymedia who brought in the BlackTrax realtime motion tracking system.
BlackTrax was integrated with eight large-format video illumination projectors and a
media server. Together the work to project the scenery on the entire stage and
BlackTrax tracks the moving scenery in an astounding 36 scene changes.

“Each time a scene changed, so did the video projection mapping and was key to
the production,’ explained Elena Novikova, CEO at Polymedia. “The effect we
created using such an intelligent integrated audiovisual system produced an
immersive and dynamic 3D effect for the audience. Unlike 3D, it performs live, in a
single sequence that ignited everyone’s imaginations and emotions.’

Crime and Punishment follows the story of Rodion Raskolnikov, an impoverished
student living in St Petersburg who is tormented by one question: “Am I a trembling
creature, or have I the right?’ He creates his own theory to save mankind from
suffering and to test his theory he commits a crime. One scene involved Raskonikov
imagining himself as young boy who comes across a group of peasants beating a
sick mare. The clever use of video projection combined “emotional turmoil’ around
that experience.

“The magnitude and complexity of the project meant that we needed to rely on the
world’s most famous tracking system enabling us to maximize the use of stage
space and giving the performance multi-dimensionality as well as unlimited creative
freedom for the performers. Polymedia is extremely proud to be the very first
company to deploy BlackTrax, in Russia. Now we see that our joint project was very
successful – the production harmoniously combines the director’s original idea and
audiovisual technologies,’ enthused Novikova.

“The project hails a new chapter for BlackTrax in helping to combine multiple
production elements, maximizing audience impact as well as combining two
performance genres for a production that was really spectacular and innovative,’
said Gil Densham, CEO at CAST BlackTrax Ltd.

“Thanks to the Polymedia engineers’, Crime and Punishment at Moscow Musical
Theatre has gone down in history as being one of the most technologically advanced
performances ever to be staged in Russia,’ said Mikhail Shvydkoi, Art Director of
the Moscow Musical Theatre.