All in the Interactive Family

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In his latest sound-and-light, multimedia stage extravaganza, director George Coates turns his well-honed use of cutting-edge, computer-animated video technology to a serious subject: the impact of two-way, interactive TV on family privacy and social cohesiveness. Box Conspiracy: An Interactive Show, created by Coates and composer Marc Ream, recently completed a six-week run at Coate's performance venue, Theatre Works in San Francisco.

Audiences don cardboard 3-D glasses to bring into focus a blurred projection of the Hornsby home: an enlarged, postmodern version of a farmhouse on a hill. Derek Hornsby (played by Tim Wiggins) is a high-tech everyman, a product designer for …