Rick Treweek did not build Uncanny Alley because anyone had asked him to.
There was no commissioning brief.
“My biggest struggle’s always been my conditioning that my stuff is too weird and no one will like it.”
No studio waiting for delivery.
No franchise needing another universe.
He started building it during lockdown because the real world had suddenly become inaccessible.
In 2020, as South Africa entered the severe restrictions of the early COVID-19 pandemic, Treweek began constructing a strange cyberpunk corner of the internet inside VRChat.
Somewhere people could occupy together when physically standing next to one another had suddenly become impossible.
Six years later, that weird lockdown project is going to the Emmys.
A South African Virtual World Enters the Emmy Race
Uncanny Alley: A New Day, created through a collaboration between Treweek’s Cape Town-based Virtual Worlds Company and Los Angeles immersive-theatre company Ferryman Collective, has been nominated for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmys.
There are only three nominees.
The Television Academy lists the other two as Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema, from NBCUniversal, Blumhouse, Meta and Nexus Studios, and The World of Fallout, involving Amazon MGM Studios, Kilter Films, Magnopus and Bethesda Game Studios.
That company makes the nomination particularly striking.
On one side are projects connected to some of the largest businesses and entertainment properties in global film, television, gaming and technology.
On the other is an artist-led virtual universe that began as one South African creator’s strange lockdown experiment.
The Outstanding Emerging Media Program winner is scheduled to be announced on Saturday, 5 September during the first night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards at Los Angeles’ Peacock Theater.
That is distinct from the main televised 78th Emmy Awards ceremony, which follows on 14 September.
Treweek plans to be there.
This Is Theatre, but the Audience Is Inside It
Calling A New Day a television programme does not quite explain what it is.
It is live theatre performed inside virtual reality.
Audiences enter Uncanny Alley through VRChat and become part of the story rather than spectators looking at it from the outside.
They begin as detainees trapped inside a digital city controlled by Adaptive Learning Industries, a corporation preparing to impose an update capable of erasing citizens’ memories.
Then the escape begins.
Participants have to move through the environment, interact directly with performers, evade capture and eventually decide whether they should abandon Uncanny Alley for another metaverse or remain behind and fight for their home.
Ferryman Collective says the production unfolds through more than 30 virtual environments.
Two live actors perform 15 characters in real time.
The audience talks back.
The performers respond.
The show has a structure, but the people entering it are unpredictable.
That means no two performances can unfold in precisely the same way.
This is where theatre starts behaving like a game.
And a game starts behaving like a theatre production.
The Alley Existed Before the Show
A New Day did not create Uncanny Alley.
It entered a universe Treweek had already been building for years.
Known inside virtual reality as MetaRick, Treweek began the project in 2020 and gradually expanded its characters, lore and strange digital geography.
By 2022, the original Uncanny Alley was part of Venice Immersive, where La Biennale listed Treweek as its South African director, producer and metaverse creator.
That same year, the project won the Spirit of Raindance Award.
Then Ferryman Collective entered the picture.
The Los Angeles company had already been experimenting with live theatre inside virtual reality.
Treweek had a world.
Ferryman had performers.
The obvious question became what might happen if those things stopped existing separately.
The Collaboration Needed a New World
Rather than simply putting actors into an existing Uncanny Alley map, the collaborators expanded the universe for live performance.
Virtual Worlds Company built an environment containing more than 30 spaces while working within the technical limits of headsets including standalone Meta Quest hardware.
That optimisation matters.
Building something visually ambitious for a powerful PC is one challenge.
Building a large interactive theatrical world that needs to operate for performers and audience members across comparatively constrained consumer hardware is another.
Treweek remained central to the world and character design.
At Venice, La Biennale credited him as a main creator, art director and lead designer, alongside co-director Stephen Butchko.
Butchko wrote the screenplay and serves as the production’s theatrical director.
Deirdre V. Lyons works as producer and assistant director, while Christopher Lane Davis — better known as Screaming Color — shaped animation, visual effects, original music and sound design alongside the technical systems driving the performance.
For Treweek, that live human layer changed something fundamental about the world he had spent years building.
“Ferryman brought something to the Alley I could not have built on my own: live performance,” he says.
“The most extraordinary part of this for me has been watching actors step inside characters I had drawn and lived with for years, and give them a voice and a body in real time.”
His contribution was the universe.
Theatre made it breathe.
From Venice to the Emmys
A New Day premiered in competition at Venice Immersive in 2024.
It left with the Fanheart3 XR Fan Experience Award, one of the festival’s official collateral awards.
Then the project travelled.
SXSW presented it in its XR Experience Spotlight in 2025.
NewImages hosted its French premiere.
Raindance Immersive selected it for Best Immersive Theatre consideration.
The Auggie Awards placed it among the Best Art or Film finalists.
And in July this year, it appeared inside SIGGRAPH’s Immersive Pavilion in Los Angeles.
Awards followed too.
XRMust named it Best Interactivity/Performance and placed it second for Best Sound Design.
Taiwan’s Kaohsiung Film Festival later awarded it the XR Immersive Award.
The Emmy nomination therefore did not arrive from nowhere.
But it does represent a different kind of recognition.
Immersive festivals already understand VR theatre.
The Television Academy recognising it places that work inside a much broader entertainment conversation.
What Exactly Counts as Television Now?
That may be the larger question sitting underneath the nomination.
Uncanny Alley: A New Day is not a conventional television episode.
It is not quite a videogame.
It is not traditional theatre.
And although virtual reality is essential to the experience, simply calling it a VR project does not capture the live performance happening inside it.
It borrows from all of those forms.
Two actors perform live.
Participants behave like players.
The environment behaves like a game world.
The story uses cinematic scale.
And everything happens remotely inside a shared digital space.
The Television Academy putting A New Day into an Emmy category is therefore interesting beyond the possibility of a trophy.
It acknowledges that entertainment is producing forms that no longer sit politely inside the boxes built for older media.
The Weird Thing Was the Thing
Treweek appears unusually comfortable in that territory now.
That was not always the case.
“My biggest struggle’s always been my conditioning that my stuff is too weird and no one will like it, so it’s only for me,” he says.
“But eventually I realised it’s my weird moonlighting projects that bring me the most success.”
There is a useful lesson in that beyond virtual reality.
Creative industries spend a lot of time talking about innovation while quietly rewarding familiarity.
Creators learn what a film should look like.
What a game should feel like.
How television should behave.
What kind of idea sounds commercially sensible in a meeting.
And somewhere inside that process, strange ideas are often edited into recognisable ones before anyone gets the chance to discover whether the strange part was actually the value.
Uncanny Alley went in the opposite direction.
It remained weird.
It remained difficult to categorise.
It kept expanding according to its own logic.
And now it is standing beside Blumhouse and Fallout at the Emmys.
Kokstad to Kommetjie to Los Angeles
Treweek grew up in Kokstad and now works from Kommetjie in Cape Town.
His relationship with technology was not formed by having every new device placed in front of him as a child.
He has spoken about growing up without the electronics that later became central to his life, and how encountering computers later helped preserve a sense of curiosity about them.
That curiosity became a career.
Games.
3D printing.
Robotics.
Immersive technology.
Virtual worlds.
Avatars.
And eventually an alley that did not physically exist, built during a period when almost nobody could go anywhere.
There is something appropriately circular about that project now taking him to Los Angeles.
Start by Removing the Fear
For South Africans wondering where someone even begins with immersive storytelling, Treweek points towards Electric South and its development work on the continent.
But his simpler advice may be more useful.
Remove the fear.
“Whatever you break, you can build again.”
It is easy to say that once the thing you built has an Emmy nomination attached to it.
But Uncanny Alley existed for years before that recognition.
Before the Television Academy.
Before Venice awards.
Before international festival programmes.
Before anyone could point at it and say that the weird experiment had become important.
That may be the real value of Treweek’s story.
The success did not make the strange idea worthwhile.
The idea had to be allowed to remain strange long enough for everybody else to catch up.
On 5 September, Rick Treweek will sit inside the Peacock Theater while a South African virtual world competes for an Emmy.
Whatever happens when the envelope opens, the unlikely part has already happened.
A weird alley built during lockdown made it all the way to Los Angeles.
Reporting basis: Based primarily on material supplied directly to Viranova about Rick Treweek, Virtual Worlds Company and the development of Uncanny Alley: A New Day, including Treweek’s comments on lockdown, creative insecurity, Ferryman Collective and South Africa’s immersive-media ecosystem. The Emmy nomination was verified directly with the Television Academy, while production credits, festival history and awards were cross-checked against La Biennale di Venezia, Raindance Immersive, XRMust, Kaohsiung Film Festival, SXSW and SIGGRAPH. The Television Academy confirms Uncanny Alley: A New Day as one of three 2026 Outstanding Emerging Media Program nominees.
Story index Key points, people & topics
Key points & topics
- A cyberpunk VRChat world South African artist Rick Treweek began building during lockdown has evolved into live immersive theatre — and is now one of only three nominees for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmys.
- Rick Treweek began building Uncanny Alley during lockdown because people could no longer occupy the same physical spaces. Six years later, the strange South African VRChat universe is competing against Blumhouse and Fallout...
- South African worldbuilder Rick Treweek turned a lockdown VRChat experiment into Uncanny Alley: A New Day. Now it is one of three Emmy nominees.
Frequently asked Answers from the desk
Who is Rick Treweek?
Rick Treweek, also known as MetaRick, is a South African artist, creative technologist and virtual-world builder behind Uncanny Alley and founder of Virtual Worlds Company.
What is Uncanny Alley?
Uncanny Alley is a cyberpunk virtual universe created by Rick Treweek inside VRChat.
When did Rick Treweek create Uncanny Alley?
The project began in 2020 during the COVID-19 lockdown period.
What is Uncanny Alley: A New Day?
It is a live immersive theatre production performed inside VRChat, combining virtual-world design, gaming, theatre and real-time audience participation.
Is Uncanny Alley: A New Day nominated for an Emmy?
Yes. It is nominated for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmys.
How many nominees are in the Outstanding Emerging Media Program category?
There are three nominees.
What is Uncanny Alley competing against at the Emmys?
It is nominated alongside Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema and The World of Fallout.
When will the Outstanding Emerging Media Program Emmy be awarded?
The category is scheduled for Saturday, 5 September 2026 during the first night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards.
Where are the Creative Arts Emmys taking place?
The ceremonies take place at the Peacock Theater at L.A. LIVE in Los Angeles.
How does Uncanny Alley: A New Day work?
Small groups enter the VR world as participants, interact directly with live actors and make decisions that can affect how the performance unfolds.
Credibility & transparency How this story is reported
- Content type
- News
- Verification
- Official source
- Reporting basis
- Based primarily on material supplied directly to Viranova about Rick Treweek, Virtual Worlds Company and the development of Uncanny Alley: A New Day, including Treweek’s comments on lockdown, creative insecurity, Ferryman Collective and South Africa’s immersive-media ecosystem. The Emmy nomination was verified directly with the Television Academy, while production credits, festival history and awards were cross-checked against La Biennale di Venezia, Raindance Immersive, XRMust, Kaohsiung Film Festival, SXSW and SIGGRAPH. The Television Academy confirms Uncanny Alley: A New Day as one of three 2026 Outstanding Emerging Media Program nominees.
- Sources & context
- Uncanny Alley began as a South African VRChat world created by Rick Treweek, known as MetaRick, during the COVID-era period when physical gathering was severely restricted. The original project later entered the international immersive circuit, while Uncanny Alley: A New Day was developed with Los Angeles-based Ferryman Collective as live VR theatre. Ferryman’s current production information describes a world of more than 30 environments in which two live actors perform 15 characters for participating audiences. The 2026 Emmy nomination puts the artist-led Ferryman Collective and Virtual Worlds Company production against Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema, from NBCUniversal, Blumhouse, Meta and Nexus Studios, and The World of Fallout, involving Amazon MGM Studios, Kilter Films, Magnopus and Bethesda Game Studios. Outstanding Emerging Media Program is scheduled to be presented on Saturday, 5 September during the first night of the Creative Arts Emmy Awards at the Peacock Theater. The main televised 78th Emmy Awards ceremony follows on 14 September.
- Image
- Photo: Rick Treweek
- Primary source
- televisionacademy.com
Edited under our Editorial Standards and How We Report process. Spotted an error? Open the correction form below, or email corrections@viranova.co.za.
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Filed by Viranova Culture Desk for the Artists & Creatives desk · Cape Town, South Africa / Los Angeles, United States. Published 27 Aug 2026.
Sources
Primary material
Viranova obtained, attended or witnessed this directly.
- Rick Treweek created Uncanny Alley during South Africa’s COVID-19 lockdown period as a virtual world where people could gather inside VRChat Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek says Ferryman Collective brought live performance into the Uncanny Alley universe and allowed characters he had created to gain voices and bodies through actors performing in real time Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek says one of his longstanding creative insecurities was believing his work was too weird for other people, before recognising that his experimental side projects repeatedly produced some of his greatest opportunities Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek grew up in Kokstad and now lives in Kommetjie in Cape Town Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek recommends Electric South and its development programmes to South African creators interested in immersive storytelling Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek’s advice to emerging creators is to remove the fear around experimentation because whatever they break can be built again Rick Treweek / Virtual Worlds Company material supplied to Viranova accessed 27 August 2026
Secondary material
Reported first by another publication or organisation, and credited here.
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day is nominated for Outstanding Emerging Media Program at the 78th Emmys Television Academy accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day is credited by the Television Academy to VRChat, Ferryman Collective and Virtual Worlds Company Television Academy accessed 27 August 2026
- The other nominees for Outstanding Emerging Media Program are Blumhouse Enhanced Cinema and The World of Fallout Television Academy accessed 27 August 2026
- Outstanding Emerging Media Program is scheduled for presentation on Saturday 5 September 2026 during the first night of the Creative Arts Emmys Television Academy accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day was presented in Venice Immersive competition in 2024 as a United States and South African production directed by Stephen Butchko and Rick Treweek La Biennale di Venezia accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek is credited as art director, lead designer and one of the main creators of Uncanny Alley: A New Day while Stephen Butchko is credited for the screenplay La Biennale di Venezia accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day contains more than 30 virtual environments and uses two live actors to portray 15 characters in real time Ferryman Collective accessed 27 August 2026
- The original Uncanny Alley won the Spirit of Raindance Award in 2022 Raindance Immersive accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day won the Fanheart3 XR Fan Experience collateral award at the 81st Venice International Film Festival La Biennale di Venezia accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day won Best Interactivity/Performance and placed second for Best Sound Design at the 2024 XRMust Awards XRMust accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day received the XR Immersive Award at the 2025 Kaohsiung Film Festival Kaohsiung Film Festival accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day was part of the SXSW 2025 XR Experience Spotlight programme SXSW accessed 27 August 2026
- Uncanny Alley: A New Day appeared in the Immersive Pavilion at SIGGRAPH 2026 in Los Angeles SIGGRAPH accessed 27 August 2026
- Rick Treweek grew up on a farm in Kokstad and has described encountering computers later than many technology professionals as an important source of his curiosity East Coast Radio / Beautiful News accessed 27 August 2026
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