New Paradise Laboratories & Riot Group Present FREEDOM CLUB, 1/6-15

The Obie Award-winning New Paradise Laboratories and The Riot Group present the New York Premiere of Freedom Club, written by Adriano Shaplin and directed by Whit MacLaughlin. Freedom Club runs from January 6 - 15, 2011, as part of the APAP Conference 2011, at the Connelly Theater, located at 220 East 4th Street between Avenues A and B in NYC.

Performance times are Tuesday - Friday at 8pm, Saturday at 7pm and 10pm, and Sunday at 4pm and 7pm. Ticket price ranges from $12 to $20 (pay what you want) and can be purchased online at http://www.BrownPaperTickets.com or by calling 718-289-4167. Running time is 75 minutes. Train access via the F to 2nd Ave. or #6 to Bleecker St. For more information on the play visit http://www.FreedomClubTheShow.com.

Freedom Club is a savage comedy about the delirium and danger in American extremism. Freedom Club moves from a dream-play involving Abraham Lincoln and assassin John Wilkes Booth to Virginia, 2015, where a determined group of self-styled extremists are trying to become more radical.

The Riot Group's Artistic Director, Adriano Shaplin, first saw New Paradise Laboratories (NPL's) Don Juan in Nirvana at the 2004 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. Says Shaplin, "I thought their work was intense and striking and sexy. They were a company of long-term collaborators, like The Riot Group, but their style was the exact opposite of ours. Whereas our style is minimalist and very text-driven, NPL's is visually dense and totally physical." Artistic Director of NPL, Whit MacLaughlin, says, "We wondered what would happen if we smashed these two cults together. The result has been that Freedom Club is a radically different kind of piece for both of us. It's a mind-melding."

MacLaughlin says, "We began working on this piece at the beginning of the Obama administration so the political and social polarization in the United States was a big influence. We wanted to look at the roots of these conflicts but also speculate about where this extremism could lead us in the future." Shaplin adds, "I wanted to get between these various polarities-past and present, left and right, male and female-and implode the structures."

Adriano Shaplin (Playwright, Artistic Director of the Riot Group) is co-founder of the Riot Group and has written eight plays for the ensemble. In addition to his work for the Riot Group, Adriano Shaplin has been commissioned as a playwright by Pig Iron Theatre Company (the Obie Award-winning Hell Meets Henry Halfway), the Royal Shakespeare Company, London's Soho Theatre, Playwright's Horizons and New Paradise Laboratories. From 2006 to 2008 Adriano served as the first International Playwright-in-Residence with the Royal Shakespeare Company, and his first play for the RSC, The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes, debuted in London in 2008. His plays for the Riot Group are published in the United Kingdom by Oberon Books and have been performed in translation in Greece, Austria, Denmark, Brazil, the Netherlands and Belgium.

Whit MacLaughlin (Artistic Director of NPL and Director) is the Obie and Barrymore Award-winning Artistic Director of New Paradise Laboratories. He has conceived, directed, and designed 14 original performance works with the company since its inception in 1996. Prior to his founding of NPL, he was a charter member, for 17 years, of the Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble. He has acted in, directed, or written hundreds of theatre productions, many invented from the ground up using the techniques of collaborative theatre creation. He is a recipient of a NEA/Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Artistic Advancement Grant, a Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Fellowship Award in 2003 and in 2005, and a 2002 Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in Performance Art.

The Riot Group is a small ensemble of theater artists based in New York City. Known for their experimental, language-driven texts, powerful ensemble playing and mordant dark comedy, the ensemble is a sustained collaboration between playwright/artistic director Adriano Shaplin, performers Stephanie Viola, Drew Friedman, Paul Schnabel and lighting designer Maria Shaplin. Past works include Wreck the Airline Barrier, Victory at the Dirt Palace, Pugilist Specialist, Switch Triptych and Hearts of Man. The Riot Group have performed in New York at The Culture Project, 59E59 and the Ohio Theatre; in London at the Soho Theatre and Riverside Studios; the Magic Theatre in San Francisco, the Walker Arts Center in Minneapolis, Theater Der Welt Festival in Stuttgart, ARCHES in Glasgow, the Flynn Center for the Arts and the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival. The Riot Group are veterans of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where they previously received four Scotsman Fringe Firsts. "The Riot Group has established its considerable reputation these past few years with scalpel-sharp, ultra-modern satires on American public life," says TimeOut London. For more info visit http://www.theriotgroup.com.

New Paradise Laboratories (Executive Producer) is an experimental theatre company founded in 1996 by Whit MacLaughlin and now includes actors Lee Etzold, McKenna Kerrigan, Jeb Kreager, Mary McCool, Aaron Mumaw, Matt Saunders, and media designer Jorge Cousineau. 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 all over the country. Past works include Fatebook, Batch (originally commissioned by the Humana Festival of New American Plays), Planetary Enzyme Blues, Don Juan in Nirvana, Rose Selavy Takes a Lover in Philadelphia, This Mansion is a Hole, the Obie Award-winning The Fab 4 Reach the Pearly Gates, Stupor, and Gold Russian Finger Love. Prom, a work of fake anthropology for young adults, premiered at The Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis. New Paradise Laboratories have been based in Philadelphia since 1998. Over the years, it has been named, variously, Best Theatre Company, Best Experimental Theatre Company, and Best Theatre Ensemble by a variety of Philadelphia news publications. "New Paradise Laboratories is a wild, sensory, erotic experience. Astonishingly acrobatic. Mind-bending. Fearless," says The Louisville Courier-Journal. For more info visit http://www.newparadiselaboratories.org.

The cast includes Drew Friedman, McKenna Kerrigan, Jeb Kreager, Mary McCool, Paul Schnabel, Adriano Shaplin and Stephanie Viola.

The creative team consists of Whit MacLaughlin and Adriano Shaplin (Sound Design), Maria Shaplin (Lighting Design), Matt Saunders (Scenic Design), Rosemarie E. McKelvey (Costume Design), Jorge Cousineau (Projection Design) and Emily Rea (Stage Manager).

Freedom Club was developed, in part, in residency at the Princeton Atelier at Princeton University in the fall of 2009. Six workshop performances were presented at the OFF Center for the Performing Arts in Burlington, Vermont, in August of 2010 and Freedom Club debuted at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival in September of 2010.

Freedom Club has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Also, through generous support from William Penn Foundation, Wyncote Foundation, Samuel S. Fels Fund, Philadelphia Cultural Fund, Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Independence Foundation, The Philadelphia Foundation and individual donors.

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