EXPERIMENT #42.000 (RINGLING)
“Unique is not a word to be tossed around lightly. But if you were among the 150 (or so) lucky ticket holders for this weekend’s “Experiment #42.000” by the Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure (IPA)at The Ringling, you’d likely agree that this latest in the museum’s New Stages series of contemporary performances was an experience truly like no other. I mean, when was the last time a performance was tailored to you alone, an audience of one?
To conceive of putting together such a production -- IPA worked with The Ringling for better than a year and more than 80 local performers were involved -- was mind boggling. To experience the payoff was equally impressive. I left feeling just the way you’d like to feel when you wake up every morning -- uplifted, deeply in touch with all of my senses, and very grateful.”
-Carrie Siedman, Sarasota Herold-Tribune
“...all about experience and being in the now.”
-Marty Fugate, The Observer
EXPERIMENT #39 (OLD CITY)
Find this photo: IPA on the cover of Philly Weekly.
“You feel like a lab rat in a maze—embrace it. Along the path, mysterious and strange figures lead you to unexpected locales. The IPA has succeeded in creating an ergodic and cathartic theatrical experience with EXPERIMENT #39.”
-Joshua Millhouse, Phindie
“Like LARPing raised to the Nth power...some 60 undercover performers will engage you in unexpected encounters of unimaginable flavor.”
-Stephen H. Segal, Philly Weekly
“Fringe Festival show promising ‘most unusual walking tour’ delivers.”
-Shai Ben-Yaacov, NPR WHYY NewsWorks Tonight
Chosen as one of “The fringiest of the Philly Fringe Festival”
-Howard Shapiro, News Works’ Shapiro on Theater
Read an interview with IPA co-founder Emily Rea in The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Those lucky enough to experience Experiment #39, for all its white coats and pseudo-scientific weirdness, wandering through traffic, lust for you and for life, and tourists’ curious looks, got a taste of one of the Fringe Festival’s quintessential opportunities, as tightly plotted and orchestrated as it was sprawling and unexpected.”
-Alaina Mabaso, The Art Blog
EXPERIMENT #23b (BROOKLYN MUSEUM)
“Set somewhere between immersive theater and an alternate mapping project of the museum, the journey would take me from galleries to off-limits areas in a strange sequence of uncomfortable lectures, precarious dance, and a mummy-Egyptologist duet.
“The joy of the experience was really to explore a museum that I thought I knew in a totally different way (not to mention the chance to run through the museum was quite fantastic, perhaps the positive answer to the question “have you broken a rule recently?” on the form was what got me on that track).
“But what I was most left with was a curiosity about what they [The IPA] would do next, as any place we think we know can always be remapped into an entirely different experience, and it’s exciting that there is this network of performers who are taking risks with just that.”
–Allison Meier, Hyperallergic
“I need to say I’m on record as disliking interactive theater, and so my resistance to the expedition was strong. By the time, our small group of 15 or so went through a wedding ceremony on a service elevator, I was looking for the nearest exit. Then I recalled we’d been admonished to be ourselves, to “be natural.” So I became myself and, as a former history of art minor, began paying attention to the Museum’s collection, which I hadn’t visited in some time…In other words, the IPA may be on to something, after all: Do what you like and like what you do.”
–David Finkle, Huffington Post
Interview with the IPA co-founders in Brooklyn College News.
Review of BEAT Festival opening night in Dance Enthusiast.
Preview for Experiment 23b in The Brooklyn Paper.
EXPERIMENT #17 (DUMBO)
Watch the trailer for EXPERIMENT #17 (DUMBO)
Hear some audience testimonials from the project here.
Read a blog post about one audience member’s experience in DUMBO.