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New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) is an experimental theatre ensemble based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. NPL collaborates with artists from a variety of disciplines, including web designers, visual artists, writers, philosophers, composers, and architects, as well as performers who work together to create interactive theatre works.
New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) was founded to create surprising, meticulous, spiritually challenging, and wholly unique experimental theatre productions that investigate physical expression, on-stage and in life. These productions are assembled using collaborative creative processes developed by the company. The work tends to value wild humour, shock, a concern for history, a muscular visual sensibility, and a fascination with the utopian impulse.
Founded in 1996 by Whit MacLaughlin, NPL has created an average of one original performance work each year since its founding. Their work has been presented as part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe, the Humana Festival of New American Plays, Children's Theatre Company, and in residencies with universities all over the United States.
Extremely Public Displays of Privacy (EPDP) was a convention-busting theatre project from New Paradise Laboratories that combined online and live theatre performance into a cross-media, cross-disciplinary experience.
Act 1 existed entirely online, housed in a series of six websites. It was viewed as a series of music videos, text messages, blogs, Facebook pages, and cellphone calls through computers and smartphones. The narrative tracked the developing relationship between two central characters, Fess Elliot and Beatrix Luff.
Act 2 was a series of video-performances viewed by audiences through smartphones while on a walking tour in downtown Philadelphia. The performances were pre-recorded in a series of one-takes along the path of the walking tour, and therefore were viewed in a live context, blending recorded with existing live sound. Fess Elliot, spurred on by Beatrix Luff, performed a series of escalating acts of public exposure.
Act 3 was a live concert of original music that threaded its way through the first two sections of the piece. The songs were all original works written and performed by the central character, Fess Elliot. This performance focused on her evolution as an artist, musician, and woman. The performance offered the audience a very private experience in a public space.
The piece had a radically revised timeframe for theatre, was delivered sequentially and intruded itself into reality in subtle and surprising ways. The project had a distinct goal—the importation of the sensation of depth and intimacy into web-based expression. It continues NPL’s research into the intersection of theatre and virtual reality.
Acts 1 and 2 still exist online and are viewable as stand-alone expressions at
http://extremelypublicdisplays.com
NPL has a full-time staff consisting of the Artistic Director and Managing Director Inger Hatlen, and part-time consultants and contractors including Connectivity Coordinator Katy Otto, and Director of Online Practices Michael Alltop. The board of directors meets four to six times per year and is made up of leaders from the Philadelphia business and academic community.
THE STAFF
Whit MacLaughlin, Artistic Director
Inger Hatlen, Managing Director
Katy Otto, Connectivity Coordinator
Michael Alltop, Director of Internet Practice
1325 N. Randolph Street,
Philadelphia PA 19122
USA
info@newparadiselaboratories.org
http://newparadiselaboratories.org
Here are few videos reflect some of their work.