NEW PARADISE LABORATORIES

Founded in 1996, by Whit MacLaughlin

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[wh(at) we are]

New Paradise Laboratories is an experimental performance ensemble that explores radical means of expression to bend and reshape conventional ideas of theatre. We imagine theatre as visionary experience. We use a variety of creative strategies including company-devising techniques, cross-media design elements, and site-specific installation. Our pieces value sudden inspiration, paradigm shifts, and shocks to the system.

 

The collaborative environment of our working process influences the content of our pieces. We support an artist-as-entrepreneur model in our organizational structure. The artists we work with over time tend to be multidisciplinary in their interests: designers, writers, and producers, as well as actors. These ideas are central to our outreach and educational initiatives.

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history

New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) was founded in 1996 by Whit MacLaughlin and includes founding company members McKenna Kerrigan, Jeb Kreager, Mary McCool, Lee Etzold, Aaron Mumaw, Jorge Cousineau (Media Designer) and Associate Artistic Director Matt Saunders; as well as an ensemble of collaborators including Kevin Meehan, Julia Frey, Emilie Krause, Matteo Scammell, Kate Czajkowski and Sam Tower. NPL has created at least one, wholly original performance piece each year since its founding. NPL’s work has been presented at the Ontological Theatre and PS 122 in NYC, at the Walker Art Center and Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, the Princeton Atelier, at the Humana Festival of New American Plays, as well as at residencies in a variety of colleges and universities across the country. NPL has produced work at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (now FringeArts) nearly every year since its founding. Past works include: O Monsters (2016), The Adults (2014), Cold Empty Terrible (created in residence at University of Washington 2014), 27 (originally produced in 2012, remounted in 2014), Extremely Public Displays of Privacy (2011), MORT (created in residence at University of the Arts 2010), FREEDOM CLUB (created through a merging of NPL with The Riot Group,with playwright Adriano Shaplin, 2010), FATEBOOK (2009), BATCH (originally commissioned by the Humana Festival of New American Plays, 2007), Planetary Enzyme Blues (2005), Don Juan in Nirvana (2004), Rrose Selavy Takes a Lover in Philadelphia (2003), This Mansion is a Hole (2001), the Obie Award-winning The Fab 4 Reach the Pearly Gates (2000), Stupor (1999), and Gold Russian Finger Love (1998). PROM, a work of fake anthropology for young adults, premiered at The Children’s Theatre Company of Minneapolis in 2004, was remounted in 2006, premiered in Philadelphia in 2008, and was remounted again in 2012 with University of North Carolina Wilmington. FATEBOOK and Extremely Public Displays of Privacy are two works in a series merging live and online performance.

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