Escape the Room Immersive Experience THE PATH OF BEATRICE Comes to New York

Immersive Escape Productions and producing partners Michael Counts and Jennifer Worthington are proud to present The Path of Beatrice - an immersive experience that extends their groundbreaking escape room, Paradiso: Chapter 1 out into the real world.

Ticket buyers for The Path of Beatrice will embark on a journey comprised of multiple short, location-based episodes that explore the complex backstory of the Virgil Corporation and the mysterious narrative of Paradiso: Chapter 1. Each experience will feature a series of unexpected and suspenseful events and missions that reference David Fincher's early masterpiece "The Game" and the cult classic "The Institute." The experience will unfold with the exchange of packages, virtual correspondences, and interactions with performers and other players delivering clues in unlikely, site-specific locations around the city.

Experiences are custom made for each player by a creative team led by Ashley Tata with Brian Alford, Nick Auer, John Fram, Lizzie Kehoe, Karen Li, Ian Mather, Katie Pedro, and Alex Rubin. Experiences range in length from a few days to a week (or longer).

Tickets are $300 for one player, $500 for a two player group, $700 for a 3 player group, and $850 for a four player group. All tickets include admission to Paradiso: Chapter 1. Advanced booking is required - http://www.paradisoescape.com/ - and experiences can begin at any time to suit any schedule.

Paradiso creator Michael Counts - hailed as a "mad genius" and "a master of immersive theater" by The New York Times - described the experience as "the next level in immersive entertainment." He added, "I'm interested in a sort of 'virtual reality' that is more like HBO's Westworld - an experience you fully go into - rather than something you just see through VR goggles, which is a very limited experience. I want to be transported and this experience does that!"

Taylor Meyers - a longtime veteran of Punchdrunk's Sleep No More, and Third Rail Productions' The Grand Paradise, who joined Counts' team as co-director of Paradiso and The Path of Beatrice - added, "The Path of Beatrice offers an opportunity for audience members to get dragged into the murky depths of what's really going on behind Paradiso: Chapter 1. Secret missions, espionage, and sabotage - it's like seeing New York City through a live-action role-playing game where the story that matters most is yours."

Ashley Tata, acclaimed director - whose recent production Ipsa Dixit was called a "21st century masterpiece" by The New Yorker - who joined Counts' team as co-director of Paradiso and The Path of Beatrice called the production "a cross between an immersive

experience and a video game. It takes one of today's fastest growing, popular forms of entertainment and smashes it into a form that is a unique response to our screened-in, digitized age. It's a kind of entertainment perfectly suited for the 21st century."

Inspired by Dante's classic The Divine Comedy, which tells the epic tale of one man's journey through the Nine Circles of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, Counts' Paradiso is an adaptation and reframing of that journey as a series of immersive experiences. With a consistent and ever-evolving narrative, Paradiso tells the story of the Virgil Corporation, a global mega-corporation led by a team of behavioral scientists who seek conclusive proof of the Escape Gene - a rare quality that raises extraordinary people above the ordinary. The Virgil Corporation has sought to isolate this gene for years, believing that in isolating it they may control the advent of the Singularity - the merging of humans and technology - through the mapping of the human brain. Those with the gene may help to lead our precarious species into an enlightened paradise of order, balance and peace. The futuristic thriller that participants must navigate will include escape rooms, immersive theater, site specific events and - with the addition of The Path of Beatrice - a mysterious and enchanting journey through the city that brings the show directly into the real life of the participant on an individualized basis. Set in the city of its location, Paradiso will ultimately offer five chapters that render all phases of Dante's journey in an updated, Blade Runner-like setting. Chapter 1 launched in July of 2016 to wide spread acclaim. The Path of Beatrice is the first expansion of this universe. Chapter 2 will launch this summer (2017).

Paradiso co-producer Jennifer Worthington, a Hollywood feature film producer under Jerry Bruckheimer, described The Path of Beatrice as "an experience that makes audiences feel as if they have truly entered a world where the circumstances, characters, risks and drama represent a 'reality' - as if the audience member has stepped into a Hollywood suspense thriller!"

Immersive Escape Productions has been presenting a beta version for the last six months to highly positive feedback from test audiences. The fully realized experience will be open to all on June 7th. Weekly capacity through Labor Day is limited to 10 groups.

Creative Team Bios:

Michael Counts (Creator/Director/Co-Producer) is a theatrical designer and stage director, visual artist, and media and entertainment entrepreneur who has been focused on creating large-scale immersive installations, theatrical productions and innovative media and entertainment experiences, often in unconventional spaces, for the last 20 years. He is one of the early pioneers of immersive theater and has been called a "visionary" and a "mad genius" by the New York Times and "one of the most fertile imaginations working in New York City, today" by Time Out New York Magazine. Two of his recent productions were listed on The New York Times' Top 10 Lists for 2011 and

2013 and his projects in a wide range of media have been critically acclaimed and featured in press and media around the world. His recent partnership with Skybound Entertainment (the LA based media company lead by The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman) and The Walker Stalker Convention resulted in his creation of The Walking Dead Experience, an immersive touring attraction that has received broad critical acclaim since it began its national tour in the fall of 2015. http://www.countsprojects.com

Jennifer Worthington (Co-Producer) joined Jerry Bruckheimer Films, one of the most successful production companies in the motion picture industry, at just 21-years-old as a development assistant. In less than one year, she was promoted to a vice presidency position with the company and by the time she was 23-years-old, Worthington was promoted to senior vice president. While employed by Bruckheimer, she worked on numerous film projects including "Armageddon," "Enemy of the State," "Gone in 60 Seconds," "The Rock," "Black Hawk Down," "Remember the Titans" and "Crimson Tide," as well as "Dangerous Minds" and "Soldier of Fortune" in the television sector of the company. Worthington herself was the subject of an E! Entertainment Television documentary titled "The Women of Vegas," as well as features in The Washington Post and W Magazine.

While producing the blockbuster film, "Coyote Ugly," she envisioned a Hollywood version of the original Manhattan bar. She believed Las Vegas would be ideal for the concept and took a career gamble in leaving the film industry for the high-risk business of bar/nightclub ownership. She developed a plan with her partners to incorporate her background in entertainment, revolutionizing Las Vegas nightlife. In November 2001, Worthington turned her vision into reality with the grand opening of Coyote Ugly Las Vegas. Since then, she has opened four more successful projects in Las Vegas and a range of immersive entertainment properties in New York.

Ashley Tata (Co-Director) is a director working principally in the fields of new opera, multi-media performance and site-specific experiences. Recently: Kate Soper's Ipsa Dixit (EMPAC and Dixon Place - "A 21st Century Masterpiece," Alex Ross The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize Finalist); the multi-media, site-specific, pop-up series "Out of Bounds" (PROTOTYPE Festival); Molie?re's Don Juan (Fisher Center, Bard College); thingNY's immersive, site-specific opera This Takes Place Close By (Knockdown Center); Mojiao Wang's opera Encounter (National Centre for the Performing Arts, Beijing); and a multi-media concert staging of David T. Little's Soldier Songs with video by Bill Morrison (Atlas Theatre, DC and The Holland Festival, Amsterdam, Beth Morrison Projects).

Tata has worked as an assistant on numerous Beth Morrison Projects, and with directors RoBert Woodruff, Daniel Fish, JoAnne Akalaitis and Jay Scheib. She currently works with Michael Counts as a creative director and associate and is a co-Director
or Paradiso: Chapter 1 and The Path of Beatrice. In the summer of 2017 she will direct Paradiso: Chapter 2. She was the recipient of the Lotos Foundation's Emerging Artist Prize in the Arts and Sciences and was a 2017 Robert L.B. Tobin Director-Designer Showcase Winner. She holds an MFA from Columbia University.
www.ashleytata.com

Taylor Myers (Co-Director) is a theater director and actor living in New York City, specializing in large scale immersive work. He has directed work at strange times in strange places - from a river at dawn to a cemetery at three AM - and loves to stretch outside the normal parameters of theatrical experience. He has appeared as a performer in almost every long-running immersive show in NYC

including Punchdrunk's Hitchcock-meets-Shakespeare "Sleep No
More", Third RailProjects' 1970's tropical resort "The Grand Paradise", and again
for Third Rail Projects in their smash hit Alice in Wonderland tale "Then She Fell".
He serves as Artistic Director of Roll The Bones, an immersive theater company he co- founded in 2013. www.rollthebonestheatre.com

Experience Architects:
Brian Alford, Nick Auer, Ian Mather, Katie Pedro

Creative Team:
Brian Alford, Nick Auer, John Fram, Lizzie Kehoe, Karen Li, Ian Mather, Katie Pedro, Alex Rubin