Eugene Ionesco’s 1950 play "The Bald Soprano" – the first the famed playwright ever wrote – is an absurdist classic. The book landed at 24 on French newspaper Le Monde’s 1999 polled list of the 100 best books of the 20th century, and it’s one of the most performed shows in France, with a permanent repertory spot at Theatre de la Huchette since 1957 and a large number of interpretations.

It’s safe to say, however, that few to none of those interpretations featured digital actors beamed in like "Star Trek" characters.

That’s exactly the plan, though, for Marquette University’s upcoming production of "The Bald Soprano," which opens Thursday night at 5:30 p.m. at the Engineering Hall’s Visualization Lab and runs again Friday night and Saturday afternoon. The show serves as the sophomore production for the engineering space – normally used for testing architectural models – which made its debut last year with Edward Albee’s absurdist one-act "Zoo Story."

It’s the similar absurdity of Ionesco’s piece – a fairly plot-less saga about two couples bantering borderline nonsensically through an evening together – that convinced Marquette artistic assistant professor of performing arts Chester Loeffler-Bell to put the show in the incredibly unique and malleable space.

"It’s all about the absurdity of language," Loeffler-Bell noted. "It’s all about language and how we don’t communicate, can’t communicate and how absurd the English language is. I just thought it would be a neat play to be staged in here because it would allow the actors to work with the language and then design-wise allow these guys to come up with an interesting world that could augment the whole absurdness of the play."

The Vis Lab performing space is extremely small, maybe going five or six feet deep, and at first glance, it doesn’t look like much. Physically, the set currently consists of just three walls and four chairs. However, when the computers and technology fire up, the space comes alive, projecting a three-dimensional room – complete with moving props, like a ticking clock – on the area’s three walls.

And it is literally three-dimensional. With the aid of high-tech 3-D glasses (think the higher end versions once at movie theaters, not the flimsy plastic or paper ones), the once tiny space stretches deeper into the distance and off to the sides. The digital space can move, occasionally rotating to view another portion of the room. A mirror moves toward the audience from a fireplace mantle where reflections will take place, and little colorful notecards drolly label parts of the room that seemingly float in midair.

"I hate 3-D in movies, but I just think it helps serve this play," Loeffler-Bell said. "The actors do a great job dealing with the absurdity of the language, but this just gives us another way to kind of ramp up that nature of the play. The play has no plot; it makes no sense whatsoever. So instead of just doing 3-D because it’s cool, we’re doing it to help say we live in this absurd world of language."

Having a digital set instead of a physical one certainly comes with its benefits, but it also brings a special set of complications, too. For director Chelsea Drenning and scenic designer Mark Gotthelf, it means trying to create, light and block a set that doesn't exist in space and without, in some cases, concrete actors.

"I had to learn a whole new language to talk about what I wanted," Gotthelf said. "When I was thinking about the show and what animations I wanted, I never really had to think about animation before. You think about scene changes; in theater, it rolls or it pushes. There’s a whole new depth to what we can do here, so I’m trying to figure out how do I talk about the animations I want so they can actually make it.

"Part of the big challenge is making sure that the actors understand what’s happening with the space," he continued. "Until Monday night, they never really had the full show in front of them. They had gone through blocking and had a general idea of what was happening, but it wasn’t until they were actually in here that they could see what was happening – when everything was turning and growing around them."

And that’s when the actors can even make sense of what’s going on around them. When the show goes into 3-D, Gotthelf noted, the projected backgrounds will become fuzzy from the resulting over-layered image.

"Throughout the show, they don’t actually get to see what’s really happening; they have to know what’s happening," Gotthelf added.

The process of making the set and the animations has taken about a month and a half of work, and there’s still more to be done to insert the virtual actors and fix the predictably unpredictable glitches – the most recent one: a flaming fire in the background that caused the entire projected set to flicker along with it.

That’s in addition to the complicated acting side of "The Bald Soprano," a show that Loeffler-Bell admits from first-hand experience – he’s previously acted in and directed the show, albeit without moving digital sets and virtual performers that have their own set of rules – is difficult.

"It’s a hard play to memorize and keep the energy up throughout," he noted. "You can’t connect the dots as an actor, and (your energy) has to be up there the whole time because if you dip, the audience dips with you."

It’s certainly a challenge, but it’s a challenge the cast and crew of "The Bald Soprano" looks forward to – as well as one Loeffler-Bell and Gotthelf hope to continue on into the future. The two have already begun talking about next year, budgeting more time for the modeling process so they can do even more complicated, intricate scenes. After all, considering there is no set to dress, save for digitally rendered props and furniture, money isn’t particularly a problem. In fact, Gotthelf and company already have ideas for next year’s production.

 "We’re talking about a show for next year that might revolve around Greek mythology," the scenic director noted. "One of the things we want to do is do different locations and transition from locale to locale."

Gotthelf also pitched the idea of doing Shakespeare in the space – in particular the popular three-man parody show "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged)," a practical and potential-rich idea that seemed to pique Loeffler-Bell’s interest.

For the future of theater in general, well, it means we’re just one step closer to finally creating the holodeck from "Star Trek."