Obie Winner Whit MacLaughlin Collaboring with UW Drama MFA Students on New Production

Whit MacLaughlin, Artistic Director of Philadelphia's New Paradise Laboratories, has been in residence at the University of Washington School of Drama developing a new devised work with the school's MFA actors and designers. The result of that work, Cold Empty Terrible, launches the school's 2014/2015 season.

Cold Empty Terrible is a resuscitation of a theatrical debacle embedded inside Anton Chekhov's 1896 masterpiece, The Seagull. The company uses The Seagull's play-within-a-play as a jumping off point to explore themes of love, longing, artistic mission, and the end of the world. The result is a 60 minute choral work of experimental theatre that, as Chekhov wrote, "shows life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams."

It has been an adventurous and intense process for all involved. "Creating devised work is strangely personal and objective," says MacLaughlin. "It requires artists to see how they fit into the world and take responsibility for the content of their expression in the absence of a playwright. It can be a profound and vulnerable experience."

"This rehearsal process with Whit has really been about getting back to the art form. With no script, we get to come into rehearsal each time with a question," says MFA actor Anna Lamadrid of working on Cold Empty Terrible. "We experiment. We make mistakes. There is something very freeing about not knowing where all of this is heading. I have been able to finally do something that I think my professors have been ushering me to do for the last two years-resign myself to the process."

Cold Empty Terrible previews October 15 & 16 and runs October 17 - 26. Performances are Wednesday-Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sundays at 2 pm. Tickets range from $10-20 and are available online or over the phone through the ArtsUW Ticket Office, 206-543-4880 / drama.uw.edu/performances. The ArtsUW Ticket Office is located at 1313 NE 41st Street, open Monday-Friday, 11 am-6 pm.

Performances are in the Floyd and Delores Jones Playhouse, located at 4045 University Way NE.

Whit MacLaughlin is the OBIE and Barrymore Award-winning artistic director of New Paradise Laboratories. He has created 16 original works with the company since 1996, including The Adults (2014), the web-based Extremely Public Displays of Privacy (2011) and Fatebook (2009). He also directs cross-generational works at the Tony Award-winning Children's Theatre Company of Minneapolis and at the Arden Theatre where he has directed 16 productions, including four of the top five productions in the company's history. His freelance career extends to theatres around the country. He is a recipient of a 2002 Pew Charitable Trust Fellowship in Performance Art. His work has been presented at the Ontological Theatre, the Connelly Theatre, PS 122 in NYC, the Walker Art Center, the Warhol Museum, Prague Quadrennial, and by commission at the Humana Festival of New American Plays.

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