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Internet-Based Theater Company Lives Between Cyberspace and the Stage

A small Philadelphia-based company called New Paradise Laboratories is re-creating theater for the connected generation. It’s incorporating social networks like Facebook, Skype and Chatroulette into the production and presentation of shows, pulling theater into the virtual space.

This innovative experience takes audiences through a rabbit hole on a visually stimulating online adventure. Stories evolve on social networks with multimedia components from YouTube and Sound Cloud. It can be hard to decipher what’s real and what’s fiction. Before shows open on stage, the audience gets to interact with characters on Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts. The theater company works with actors to develop the fictional characters on social media accounts.

“A few years ago, we realized there was a whole audience of people that weren’t really participating in theater but they really heavily influenced by the Internet. They grew up online,” said Katy Otto, NPL’s activity coordinator. “NPL had a lot of interest in making theater that would appeal to these people.”

For the production Fatebook, the company’s theater experience begins on social media. The cast list is available online and shows all the character’s online accounts. “In ‘Fatebook’ it was a cast of characters that built identities on Facebook but with a different account — they would create an identity,” Otto said. “To start the performance you would follow a cast of characters and their interactions with each other. That culminated in a performance where they all met at a party and got to see how different people evolved.”

The 1996-founded theater company worked to bring Broadway home to the Internet, where interactive performances may thrive. Fatebook was one of the first plays of its kind. “I feel like it’s like a medium where stories can be told in a whole bunch of ways,” NPL’s artistic director Whit MacLaughlin told Mashable. “I wanted to find out how you use translate theater into an online space. You have to figure out the narration of social media — how to convey something about a person.”

Extremely Public Displays of Privacy is the newest experience presented by NPL. The play’s three acts are available online. Act one consists of videos of the two main female protagonists meeting online for the first time on Chatroulette. Actress Annie Enneking played Fess Elliot in the production. Enneking created Elliot’s online persona for close to a year, taking pictures, writing songs and updating her Facebook 24/7 as her fictional character.

“I felt very vulnerable to do it,” Enneking said. “I was creating the character online for nine months. Suddenly the day the play went up, we had to go through back in time and publish posts given the timeline of the life of production.”

Separating herself from “being Fess” was difficult when the play was over. “What I loved the most was that I had a constant outlet for my creativity. I would follow my impulses. I was creating little pieces for my character,” she said. “After the show closed, it felt like a little death.”

In addition to molding the two characters’ lives online, the play also incorporated geo-location technology where a character guides you through a park. Audience members could download a sound file for a 45-minute guided tour in a Philadelphia park. Online audiences can take a virtual walk online via YouTube. The third act completed the play with a real-time performance in Philadelphia where the theater is based. NPL is currently working on its next interactive play called ’27′ — based around the idea that the lives of creative individuals such as Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain end around this time. The production will debut next fall.

What do you think about the intersection of theatre with the virtual world? Tell us in the comments.