New Paradise Laboratories Debuts '27,' at Philadelphia’s 2012 Live Arts Fringe Festival

New Paradise Laboratories (NPL), an experimental performance ensemble, will debut its newest work, 27, at Philadelphia's 2012 Live Arts Fringe Festival. NPL creates innovative projects in a variety of media. 27 marks the debut of a new company of NPL performer-collaborators, as well as a return to the organization's muscular stylistic roots.

27 is the third in a trilogy of pieces from NPL focusing on parties as an important part of culture. Following PROM (2004), a meditation on the timeline of adulthood, and BATCH (2007), a hallucination on the mythological roots of bachelor parties, 27 will ruminate on funeral parties as celebrations of absence.

Influenced by the so-called 27 Club of prominent musicians who died (mostly from substance abuse) at age 27, and by the International Necronautical Society, a semi-fictitious avant-garde network started by novelist Tom McCarthy, 27 is obsessed with the intersection of talent and mortality. The piece will celebrate the legacy of artists who died too young.

"We love the 27ers. They rocked the boat. Their music bent countless minds in interesting new directions. We aim to bend minds as well – an NPL piece is an intoxicating blend of hallucinatory images and metaphysical hijinks. A theatre drug without the drug," says director Whit MacLaughlin.

27 features music composed by guitar prodigy Alec MacLaughlin of the band Id (Austin, TX). His compositions will feature live guitar and triggered samples, creating a noise-driven wall of sound that is alternately meditative and harrowing, in the vein of artists like Kevin Shields, Glenn Branca, and Thurston Moore.

"27 in a nutshell: you find yourself at the threshhold to the Great Unknown. What if it's not St. Peter who greets you, but brilliant poet-rockers ready to party you off into the Cosmos," says MacLaughlin.

Conceived and Created by Whit MacLaughlin and New Paradise Laboratories
Direction Whit MacLaughlin / Scenic Design Matt Saunders / Lighting Thom Weaver / Sound Whit MacLaughlin and Alec MacLaughlin / Original Music Alec MacLaughlin / Costumes Tara Webb / Performers Allison Caw, Julia Frey, Emilie Krause, Alec MacLaughlin, Kevin Meehan, Matteo Scammell.