Rick Treweek, a South African artist and world builder from Kommetjie, has won an Emmy Award for Uncanny Alley: A New Day. This is a virtual reality theatre production that won the award for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmy Awards in Los Angeles.
According to Kevin Kriedemann of Plot Twist PR & Comms, Treweek received the Emmy on 5 September at the Peacock Theatre in Los Angeles along with the Ferryman Collective team. The production is a collaboration between Virtual Worlds Company and the Los Angeles-based Ferryman Collective. It is performed live within VRChat and takes place in Uncanny Alley, a virtual universe created by Treweek.
Treweek, known in the virtual world as MetaRick, began building the virtual world in 2020 during strict Covid-19 lockdowns in Johannesburg when people could not socialise in person. In Uncanny Alley: A New Day , audiences are escaped detainees taking part in a story in which they must flee a corporation preparing to erase residents' memories. Two professional actors perform 15 characters in real time and no two performances are the same.
The production has been presented at Venice Immersive, SXSW, Raindance Immersive and SIGGRAPH, among others, and has won various other awards. Treweek recently exhibited at Continuum '26 in Saudi Arabia, where he Gh0st Out The Shell . The work combines sculpture and virtual reality to examine the relationship between physical and virtual identity.
Treweek says he has big plans for Uncanny Alley, including merchandise, 360-degree dome experiences and Steam games.
Watch here for a preview of Uncanny Alley. Press here to read more on the website.
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
