“[The audience] can interact with the characters, both online and in person. They can be a part of the show in discreet, mischievous, and comfortable ways.”
—Whit MacLaughlin, director of FATEBOOK

FATEBOOK explores what happens when our online relationships collide with our physical ones. A massive undertaking with 13 central characters and 100 secondary characters, audiences attend FATEBOOK in person at the Festival and online (go to www.fatebooktheshow.com and learn how you can "friend" the characters). In the online world, the actors communicate in character with each other and with you, building an ever-expanding network of relationships and memories that are both real and imagined.

At the Festival show, audiences experience FATEBOOK by trailing individual characters at will. The action plays out within a labyrinth of screens displaying the shifting cityscapes and intimate spaces in which the characters live. Twelve projectors and 4 live video feeds blur the line between the digital environment and the physical one; performers seem to step in and out of a virtual world filled with pleasure and peril. Thirteen individual stories weave into one looping, shifting world; FATEBOOK allows you to follow the story from the varying perspectives and characters, until a final retelling smashes all expectations.

Under the artistic direction of Obie and Barrymore Award winner Whit MacLaughlin, New Paradise Laboratories (NPL) creates experimental theater that values wild humor, striking visuals, and a fascination with the utopian impulse.

“Each year, NPL sets out to create one completely original—and distinctive—work . . . [that] manages to be funny and, most important, wildly entertaining.” —Philadelphia Magazine

Conception and Direction: Whit MacLaughlin Set and Media Design: Matt Saunders Media and Projection Design: Jorge Cousineau Lighting Design: Drew Billiau Costume Design: Alison Johnson Production Manager: Emily Rea Technical Consultants: Educated Guesswork Web Design and Webmaster: Jeremy Beaudry, Matt Saunders, Jorge Cousineau Performers: Alex Bechtel, Kate Brennan, Moriah Cebollero, Samantha Kristina Clarke, David Greene, Delanté Keys, Nhut Le, Emily Letts, Tom Osborne, Jesse Paulsen, Rachel Radenberg, Cindy Spitko, Anne MacGillivray Wilson

This show requires the audience to move about the venue.

Each evening AREA 919 hosts a pre-performance reception in their adjacent gallery featuring Mark Khaisman: INTRAspective. Doors open at 7pm. Beer and wine served.

Executive Producers: Lenny Haas and Mary Lee Bednarek

Read blog articles about this show by clicking here.

Whit MacLaughlin (director) is the Obie and Barrymore Award winning artistic director of New Paradise Laboratories (NPL). He has conceived, directed, and designed 13 original performance works with the company since its inception in 1996. NPL’s work has been presented at the Ontological Theatre and PS 122 in New York City, the Walker Art Center and Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis, the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, The Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and many colleges and universities throughout the country. MacLaughlin has directed and performed in numerous productions along the East Coast as a freelance artist. Coming up from NPL: FREEDOM CLUB, a collaboration with the Riot Group, and MORT, the third part of a trilogy of pieces about American parties.

Matt Saunders (set and media design) is a scenic designer and Barrymore Award winning performer. He holds a BA from Virginia Tech in theater and visual art. He is also a graduate of the Scuola Internazionale dell’ Attore Comico in Reggio Emilia, Italy. A co-founding member of New Paradise Laboratories (NPL), Matt has been a scenic designer and a performer in all of NPL’s works, including BATCH at the 2008 Humana Festival for New American Plays. Matt has designed more than sixty shows for such companies as The Wilma Theater, Arden Theatre Company, Walnut Street Theater, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Headlong Dance Theater, and the Children’s Theatre Company in Minneapolis. He received the 2007 F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Philadelphia Theatre Artist. (www.mattsaunders.net)

Drew Billiau (lighting design) is the lighting coordinator/resident lighting designer for the Opera Company of Philadelphia. His credits there include Fidelio, Falstaff, Porgy and Bess, La Cenerentola, The Marriage of Figaro, Faust, Die Fledermaus, Macbeth, Don Pasquale,Turandot, and Hansel und Gretel. His other credits include The Lucidity Suitcase International’s Flamingo Winnebago, The Melting Bridge,and El Conquistador (Spain Tour); Cleveland Opera’s Faust; Arden Theater’s All My Sons, Violet, Falsettos and A Year with Frog and Toad; and Hamlet at the Lantern Theater. He has also worked for The Pennsylvania Ballet, Ballet X, Freedom Theater, and People's Light & Theater Company. An associate professor of lighting design for The University of the Arts, Billiau is also an associate designer for design firm Fine Design Associates.

Jorge Cousineau (media and projection design) has been designing sets, lights, sound, and video for dance and theater in and out of Philadelphia for over ten years. He has joined New Paradise Laboratories as a member after working with the company on Batch, which premiered at the Humana Festival in Louisville in 2007. Together with his wife Niki he co-operates Subcircle, a performance/installation company currently working on its 12th production. Cousineau has received several Barrymore Awards, including the F. Otto Haas Award for Emerging Theater Artist in 2004, as well as a Lortel Award for his sound design on the NYC production of Opus.

Alex Bechtel (cast: Tim Drexel) was born in Reading, PA. He moved to Philadelphia to attend The University of the Arts, where he recently graduated with a degree in theater arts. He lives in Philadelphia and works as a musician and actor. Over the past few years, he has worked with 1812 Productions, Arden Theatre Company, Theatre Horizon, Philadelphia Theatre Workshop, and the Philadelphia Gay & Lesbian Theatre Festival.

Kate Brennan (cast: Zoe Ex) holds an MFA from the University of Virginia. A Philadelphia native, she recently appeared in The Loudest Man on Earth (PTW) and in Raised in Captivity (BCKSEET Productions, resident company of the Society Hill Playhouse). She currently teaches at Theatre Horizon, Lantern Theater, and Merion Mercy Academy (voice). At BCKSEET Productions she launched the education program BCKSEET Ignition last fall. A company member with BCKSEET Productions, she will mount her original musical, Some Assembly Required: a new meta-musical, in spring 2010. Brennan will appear in the fall productions of Angels in America, Part I & II as Harper.

Moriah Cebollero (cast: Courtney Lee Wilson) is a born-and-raised country girl from the Poconos. A recent Temple University grad, she currently lives in Bensalem with her boyfriend Buzz and dog Angel. FATEBOOK is her first production for New Paradise Laboratories. Recent theater credits are two student-written plays, The Choices We Make and Poetic Life, produced by Philadelphia Young Playwrights and performed at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, home of the Philadelphia Theatre Company.

Samantha Kristina Clarke (cast: June Summer McCarthy) is a recent graduate from The University of the Arts. Friends, family, and teachers have given her enormous support to explore her work. Her favorite past performances include 'Tis Pity She's a Whore (Annabella), In the Boom Boom Room (Helen), and Oklahoma! (Ado Annie).

David Greene (cast: Logan Souers) was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He attended high school in Oakland, Maine, where he became involved in the theater program. David now lives in Philadelphia.

Delanté Keys (cast: Clayton Hughes) was born in Washington, D.C. and grew up in southern Maryland. In high school, he became involved in theater and never again considered a life in any other field. He graduated from Arcadia University in 2007, and has been working in the Philly theater scene since. He has appeared with InterACT, Azuka Theatre, and the National Constitution Center, among others.

Nhut Le (cast: Dahn Marks) was born and lived in Vietnam until he was six, when he and his mother came to America to join his father. He then lived in the suburbs of Philadelphia until attending The University of the Arts for acting. When Le was just a fourth grader, his high school’s production of South Pacific called for an Asian boy to play the role of Jerome. From the first audition to the final bow, he knew that acting was what he wanted to do.

Emily Letts (cast: Anita Prowler), originally from Climax, Michigan, is a junior majoring in theater at Swarthmore College. This summer she appears in Fever Dream Repertory’s I Hate Hamlet and various projects at Swarthmore and Bryn Mawr colleges. In fall 2009, Emily will attend Headlong Performance Institute. Letts would like to thank Whit for reminding her to have a dash of fate with her morning coffee.

Tom Osborne (cast: Darren Bobbich) recently graduated from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia with a BFA in acting. Originally from San Francisco, he has performed at the Young Conservatory Theater, and was named a California Arts Scholar in Theater Arts by the State of California in 2003.

Jesse Paulsen (cast: Andrew Wilson) entered the world in a hospital in Boston, a son to practicing psychotherapists. He was raised in Milton until age eight and then in Lexington (of Revolutionary War fame) until he left for Haverford College. He majored in theater via the Swarthmore department, concentrating in playwriting and directing. His other interests include Buddhism, organic and urban farming, improv, sketch, and video comedy, and Ultimate Frisbee.

Rachel Radenberg (cast: Ame Montoya) graduated from University of the Arts some time ago. She resides in New York and spends her time as an actor, writer, inventor, climber, traveler, and more. She is happy to be back working in wonderful Philadelphia.

Cindy Spitko (cast: Julia Zelda Taylor) was born and raised in Ambler, PA. School productions became Spitko's top priority and she then pursued an acting degree from Arcadia University. There, her favorite roles included Electra, Philomele, and Miranda (from Electra, The Love of the Nightingale, and The Tempest, respectively). After graduating in 2008, Spitko has worked with To The Wall Productions, The Magic Circle Theater Company (her company with Josh Hitchens and Ken Jordan), Azuka Theatre, and New Paradise Laboratories.

Anne MacGillivray Wilson (cast: Cherie Bodnar) grew up in Pittsburgh, where she dressed up her brother in tights and made him act out ballets with her. She briefly attended Arizona State University, but graduated from The University of the Arts in 2007 with a BFA in modern dance performance and emphasis in choreography. She is a co-director of local dance collective Pink Hair Affair, and directed last year’s critically acclaimed in memory of the deathtrap. While performing is her main fix, she is also into dancing anonymously, writing stories, growing plants, creating cocktails, and getting competitive with six-year-olds.