Behind the Screens
Naisha Agarwal wasn't looking for a theater credit. But she is interested in diving into problems worth solving.
A computer science major with a lifelong love of singing, Agarwal found both when she discovered Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance (REMAP) — the UCLA research center led by TFT theater department chair and associate dean of research technology Jeff Burke. REMAP sits at the intersection of art, technology and live performance.
Agarwal joined as a sophomore and spent two years helping build the technical infrastructure behind some of the program's most ambitious work, including "Xanadu," the immersive musical that transformed TFT's mainstage into a 360-degree AI-driven environment of shifting visuals, live performance and audience participation.
"I never thought you could apply computer science to something like theater," she said.
Working on "Xanadu" changed that. Her contribution included running AI pipelines on Amazon Web Services — infrastructure she had never worked with before and had to figure out on the fly. That, she said, was part of the point. REMAP operates less like a class and more like a startup. Problems arise, you fix them and the show eventually opens.
The technical challenge, as she describes it, requires holding two mindsets simultaneously — thinking like a storyteller about what an audience experiences, and thinking like an engineer about inputs, outputs and failure points. That combination is something she's enthusiastic about carrying forward beyond UCLA. This fall, Agarwal begins a PhD program in electrical engineering and computer science at UC Berkeley, where she plans to keep exploring what she calls "physical AI" — the integration of real spaces with virtual environments. "Xanadu" was one version of that idea.
Her advice to incoming computer science students? Join REMAP like she did.
"It really set me in the direction of my career," she said. "I don't know if it would have been the same without it."
