Refracted Theatre Company Creates An Audio-Immersive Experience Featuring Jelani Alladin, Blake DeLong & More

Refracted Theatre Company is inviting you to an audio-immersive theatrical experience for one. The Swell, an audio-immersive play experience, premieres on multiple platforms launches July 23, 2020. For details go to: www.refractedco.com.

While live performance is still restricted, Refracted Theatre Company is finding a way to transform the space around you in a way that only theatre can. Refracted Theatre Company makes theatre that disrupts socially accepted narratives by illuminating another side of the story. Refracted puts accepted norms through the prism of theatrical storytelling to reveal a spectrum of colorful complexity.

After having to postpone the rest of their inaugural season, Refracted Theatre Company is responding to the coronavirus pandemic with a brand-new initiative. Their goal is to listen, adapt, and disrupt in order to best serve their community in a time of crisis.

Introducing "The Swell", an audio-immersive theatrical experience for one. All of the actors involved in "Act" (Episode) One, have agreed to allow Refracted Theatre Company to make a donation in their name to an organization of their choosing, supporting the Black Lives Matter Movement, which advocates for the safety and wellness of the Black community.

Each Act of The Swell will feature work of commissioned playwrights who have created plays in which the action can only happen by way of the dialogue or the soundscape. The Swell is a sound-dive into a play, where the carefully curated sound effects, music and dialogue take you deeper into the world. As a means of transcending space, Refracted invites you, the audience, to be in charge of creating the "set" of your own immersive experience. The playwrights have assigned a location at which to enjoy their play or an activity to do while enjoying their play. The audience has full reign over the depth of their submersion, deciding when, or if, to come up for air. The Swell launches July 23 on the following platforms:

• www.refractedco.com
• Spotify
• Apple Podcasts
• Breaker
• Castbox
• Google Podcasts
• Overcast
• Pocket Casts
• RadioPublic

ACT I: A Stream Nearby and a Baseball Diamond features the following works:

Contrition: A Long Voicemail by Liba Vaynberg; directed by: Tova Wolff with sound design by Emma Wilk, featuring Blake DeLong (Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812, Off-Broadway; Othello, New York Theater Workshop; "When They See Us", Netflix) and Molly Carden (Midwives, George Street Playhouse; Translations, Studio Theatre; Emotional Creature, Signature Theater)

The Legend of Jim Gunderson and How I Wound Up In Your Ear by Dylan Guerra; directed by Graham Miller with sound design by Emma Wilk, featuring David Shih ("Hunters", Amazon; "Billions", Showtime; "City on a Hill", Showtime) , Jelani Alladin (Frozen, Broadway; Public Works' Musical Adaptation of Hercules, The Public Theater; "The Walking Dead: The World Beyond", AMC), and Claudia Acosta (Seven Spots in The Sun, Rattlestick Playwright's Theater; Architecture of Becoming, WP Theater; Don Cristóbal Billy Club Man, HERE Arts Center).

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