[1] Consisting mainly of artists and writers, they engaged in improvisational cyberformance on MOOs and later branched out into mixed reality performance, working with stage actors.
[5] In "Gutter City," they told the tale of what happened to Ishmael, from Moby-Dick, when he became involved in the Civil War after his rescue; and in "LittleHamlet" they retold the story of Shakespeare's Hamlet but attempted to show "all of the characters' formerly unspoken needs, fears, and desires.
In addition, all of the information being circulated between the online and stage performers in the form of audio, video, and text streams was subject to further transformations through computer programming.
The Plaintext Players' departure from purely text-based performance was enabled by the growing availability of multimedia technologies, and in line with their aesthetic of mediated improvisation.
Founding members of the Plaintext Players include Ursula Endlicher, Joe Ferrari, Heather Wagner, Thessy Mehrain, and Adrianne Wortzel.