Staff Photo Nick Brothers
(From left to right) Michael Pettey, Willi Goehring, Lindsey Hope Pearlman, Erika Wilhite Michael Pettey, Mason Azbill and Laura Shatkus star in “Ctrl+Alt+Del.”
The “New Now” has found its new headquarters for the next couple weekends on Mt. Sequoyah.
“Ctrl+Alt+Del” is the newest installment in The Artist’s Laboratory Theatre’s performance series, “The New Now.” The plays are an immersive, site-specific theatre experience that utilize different spaces throughout Fayetteville. This past fall, “The New Now” was set at Tri-Cycle Farms. Starting June 4, “Ctrl+Alt+Del” will take place at the Martin Chapel building and its classrooms at the Mt. Sequoyah summit conference center at 150 N Skyline Dr.
The play runs from Thursday through Sunday on the weekends of June 4-7, 11-14 and 18-21. Tickets can be purchased online at artlabtheatre.com for $15, and all of the show is wheelchair accessible. The play runs for an hour and half, and following each performance refreshments will be served, and guests will be able to talk with members of the ensemble.
According to the press release, the story follows a team of customer service workers who work for an organization called “The New Now.” They invite the public to their headquarters for product testing and other service related experiments. However, suddenly in the middle of a standard procedure something dear is taken from “New Now,” and the audience must join the gang on the quest to return it.
Staff Photo Nick Brothers
The New Now staff members, (from left to right) Willi, Lindsey, Laura and Mason, consult the company’s manual on how to solve a problem.
The play acts as an exploration of the culture of our modern digital times, where a portion of the human experience is experienced through the Internet. In a sense, “The New Now” headquarters is like the back-end workings of the Internet, where the devoted employees, who are very much human, act as guides.
Once the play starts rolling, the audience follows along with the members through nine different rooms throughout the building in search of the dear item. Without the necessary item in its proper place, the headquarters operates in flux, challenging the team to take on different, often humorous, trials.
“(The New Now employees) are there to help navigate users in the very complicated and tricky world of technology and social media,” said Erika Wilhite, executive director of The Artist’s Laboratory Theatre. “I’m pretty impressed with this collaboration and I attribute it to the devising and writing of those individuals who wrote it.”
The play is directed by Joseph Fletcher, and the ensemble consists of Lindsey Hope Pearlman, Michael Pettey, Laura Shatkus, Erika Wilhite, Celeste Richards, Arianne Ellis, Nikki Warren, Willi Goehring, and Mason Azbill.
The play is a product of devised theatre, which is a writing method that employs collaborative improvisation to make a complete work, by Pearlman, Pettey, Goehring, Wilhite and Fletcher. The initial writing began 8 weeks ago here in Fayetteville.
Staff Photo Nick Brothers
Lindsey (center), is given the rules to the game show she gets thrown into during “Ctrl+Alt+Del.”
The play makes clever quips at the way people, “the users,” access the Internet, and behave and portray themselves online. Among the whimsical and satirical dialogue, there’s very human concerns observed such as relevancy, consumerism and loneliness. Amidst the themes you’ll also find very topical jokes about popular memes, slogans and mainstream attitudes.
One of the coolest parts of the play is experiencing the “headquarters” in person throughout the rooms of the conference center on Mt. Sequoyah. The element of space and movement is definitely taken advantage of, and some of the plays best moments include keeping your eyes aware of the set and space you’re in or surrounded by and how the actors move within it. It’s very much an immersive experience that takes you for a ride.
The sets built up throughout each of the rooms make for fascinating trips through different plot points and themes. In one room, random junk is strewn about, evoking an inherent feel to warm you up to the room’s “trial.” In another, the room is set up as a whimsical game show where a team member deals with the conventions of Internet romance.
If you’re looking for a one of a kind theater experience, “Ctrl+Alt+Del” is going to be something to tell your friends about.
