Wil Petre Presents A COCKTAIL PARTY SOCIAL EXPERIMENT (w/ DISTANCE)

Wil Petre, an NYC-based cocktail guru, and a performer best known for his off-Broadway work (including Third Rail Projects' The Grand Paradise) invites the audience to join A COCKTAIL PARTY SOCIAL EXPERIMENT (w/ DISTANCE) - an unconventional hybrid of story slam, game night, and boozy voyeurism, playing Thursday evenings at 8:30pm EST via Zoom. Suggested Ticket Price is $18 and can be reservations can be made at www.acocktailpartygame.com/distance-experiment.

Is it possible to have a meaningful conversation with a perfect stranger in our socially distanced and anxious world? This question has inspired the theatre artist and storyteller Wil Petre to create A COCKTAIL PARTY SOCIAL EXPERIMENT (w/ DISTANCE), an immersive evening of cocktails and storytelling. The project was developed over the past two years in tandem with A Cocktail Party Game, an actual game employing a deck of symbolic cards, containing a selection of drink recipes as well as conversation prompts, such as: "When was your moral compass off?" or: "What happens next?" The guests of this show are asked to turn off their cell phones for the duration of the event; some can participate in the game play, others can just watch and listen - while party guests skip the small talk, and get into the good stuff.

"I created A Cocktail Party Game and A Cocktail Party Social Experiment (w/ Distance) to give people permission and a formula to have a real conversation, all the while retraining their ears to listen," says Petre, whose first-hand knowledge of how meaningful and healing a conversation can be comes from years of experience as an NYC bartender. "In a society where social media-dominated communication induces feelings of alienation and detachment, I am interested in creating intimate experiences that blur the line between performance and an intimate connection. It will also be deeply important in these formative first months of a pandemic to look at and speak to strangers with a remembered sense of curiosity, and not with suspicion," he explains. A Cocktail Party Social Experiment (w/ Distance) is an online translation from a succesful analog live event - A Cocktail Party Social Experiment - that was held monthly at Chelsea Music Hall until May 2020.

The social experiment will run weekly indefinitely. For details, visit http://www.acocktailpartygame.com/distance-experiment

Wil Petre (Concept, Host) is a performer, director, and experience designer specializing in intimate performance in public spaces. He has been praised by The New York Times as "a supremely charming actor who finds every laugh in the script and many that aren't." Notable recent appearances include Third Rail Projects' 2016 show The Grand Paradise, of which he was an original cast member; Wil was also an original creative cast member of Queen of the Night, the 2015 Drama Desk recipient for Unique Theatrical Experience. Petre has also worked with The Civilians, Witness Relocation, Minute Zero, Collective Museum, Theater Mitu, and Les Freres Corbusier/Alex Timbers, among others, and appeared on stage at such important NYC venues as Playwright's Horizons, Cherry Lane Theater, La MaMa ETC, St. Ann's Warehouse, and Ars Nova. Outside the city, he performed nationwide and internationally, including appearances at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and in Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also works in film and TV.

As a storyteller, Wil has told stories with The Moth, winning the first slam he participated in and appearing in many subsequent Moth StorySlams and GrandSlams. He also told stories at other open mic venues such as KGB Bar and Bar 2A. Wil was also a participant of the 2014 Future of Storytelling Summit in Snug Harbor, Staten Island (with The Windmill Factory), and 2016 Future of Storytelling Festival at the Africa Center (with Woodshed Collective.)

Petre received his BFA with honors in Drama from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where he has also been teaching for almost a decade. He is currently based out of Brooklyn, NY where he operates a cocktail experience company Aqua Regia and its signature bar for one. He occasionally performs boylesque under the name Handsome Peter. www.wilpetre.com

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