Orchard Project Launches HACKATHON, 6/22-23

More than ten teams of artists and technologists will collaborate to create new "experience apps," concepts, and prototypes this weekend at the inaugural Orchard Project Hackathon, the Artistic Director of the Exchange and the Orchard Project, Ari Edelson, announced today. Over the course of the weekend, teams will be challenged to develop technologies that advance the artistic form. The Orchard Project Hackathon will take place in the Catskill Preserve in Upstate New York from June 22 - 23, 2013.

"Over the past seven summers, the Orchard Project has helped dozens of theater artists to devise and develop their next big ideas," Mr. Edelson said. "This year, we are merging two types of creativity - artistic and technological - to support the development of a new type of cutting-edge idea. I can't wait to see the apps that these teams create."

Inspired by hakathons in the technology sphere and drawing on the Orchard Project's success in developing new work, the Orchard Project Hackathon will be an intense weekend of idea generation, development, and collaboration. Technologists, who have volunteered to participate, will team up with the Orchard Project's resident artists. The challenge is to create an app that is, itself, a performance or art project - or an app that advances the artform. Teams will devise demonstrations of their ideas, which will be presented on Sunday afternoon. Winning ideas will be posted on the Exchange's website.

A selection of the artists and technologists involved in the Orchard Project Hackathon include:

Ari Edelson (Director and Artistic Director, Orchard Project:, Co-Founder, Culture Craver)
Brendan Berg (Technologist, Entrepeneur, Plus Minus Five)
Carey Perloff (Director, Playwright, and Artistic Director of San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater)
Krissy Vanderwarker (Artistic Director, Chicago's Dog and Pony Theater)
Krista Knight (Playwright, Knight and Brinegar)
Lance Horne (composer, musical director)
Michael Kiley (Singer/songwriter/composer, founder of the free music project The Mural and The Mint)
Scott Varland (Technologist, Designer, CEO of SocialBomb)
Whit McLaughlin (Director and Artistic Director, New Paradise Laboratories)

The Orchard Project has birthed more than 70 shows over its first seven years, including the TONY-winning 33 Variations on Broadway, The Royal Court's Posh (West End), Obie-winning The Aliens, The Shipment, and Architecting, and Robert Schenkkan's Steinberg and Kennedy-winning All the Way, slated to come to the American Reparatory Theater and Broadway next year. Shows developed at the Orchard Project have been or will be produced at the Royal Court in London, The Public Theater, the Humana Festival, The National Theater (UK), American Repertory Theater, Yale Repertory Theatre, The Atlantic Theater Company, Center Theater Group, Playwrights Horizons, Theatre Di Roma, Philadelphia Live Arts, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and many other theaters across America and Europe.

The work of the Exchange is generously supported through the donations of countless visionary individuals. Major support comes from the New York State Council for the Arts and The Dramatists Guild Foundation.

More information about the Orchard Project Hackathon and the Orchard Project is available at www.exchangenyc.org.

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