The Experience
You are always sure to experience something unique and edgy with this group. It has produced a sixties trilogy over the last few years dealing with pop culture — from James Bond to the Beatles to Hugh Heffner — with wonderfully wry titles: Gold Russian Finger Love, The Fab 4 Reach The Pearly Gates, and This Mansion Is a Hole.
These are movement theater pieces with fragments of text, lots of music and mind blowing sound. Tremendous physical energy, ironic awareness to burn, and a playful sexuality distinguish its work. The company's stated purpose is “the creation of original theater work that has some relationship to popular culture, in an attempt to see beneath the surface of that popular culture to the images, archetypes and potential meanings underneath.”
History
A group of young actors from West Virginia, under the direction of Whit McLaughlin, came to Philadelphia a little over a decade ago to develop their particular ensemble style and pursue careers in Philadelphia theater. New Paradise Laboratories has been well received and supported in Philadelphia. Whit McLaughlin received a Obie Award for the sound for the New York presentation of “The Fab 4 Reach the Pearly Gates.”