Philadelphia Fringe Festival only 6 weeks away
Monday, July 27th, 2009
The Philadelphia Fringe Festival is still 6 weeks away, but you can already experience a taste of its experimental theater online, in real time.
Listen:
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The play and online project are called Fatebook, 13 characters intertwine with love affairs, squabbles, and betrayals. So far it exists completely in cyberspace. Actors give voice to those characters through the social networking platforms. Facebook and Twitter. In September the characters will finally meet face-to-face, onstage at the Fringe Festival.
Actor Tim Bechtel is updating his character's Facebook page and tweeting several times a day. People following his character online freely comment on his fictive life.
Bechtel: The Facebook part of the show is a huge part of it. Not only do the audience comments affect the show, but they are the show. If they connect with the Facebook characters on Facebook they become part of the show.
The director of Fatebook says he has mapped out the progress of each character, but the actors don't yet know what will happen to them.
By the by, the company creating the show is New Paradise Laboratories, and the Director is Whit MacLaughlin, and the piece will be presented by the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival (not the Philly Fringe)
You can delve into the characters' lives by visiting http://www.fatebooktheshow.com.
Would be terrific if the Fatebook website: http://www.fatebooktheshow.com could be included.
We've received a number of inquiries about it in response to this feature (which is awesome!) with people looking for the site.
Many thanks,
Robin