New York Neo-Futurists' NY Premiere of HAPPY TO SEE YOU Opens Tonight

The award-winning New York Neo-Futurists have announced the New York premiere of Happy To See You, created and directed by Cara Francis. It will run at The Collapsable Hole this month.

A meditation on the complex relationships that humans develop with the virtual spaces they inhabit, pass through, and engage with every day, Happy To See You interviews its audience members on their social media habits, their feelings about Artificial Intelligence and their experience living a virtual life in a physical world. Selected participants, engaged in conversation with the disembodied voice of an open-ended dialogue system, will see themselves reflected by cameras beginning with the ones used by their own smart phone apps. In addition to an opportunity to "be truly seen by your friends, your peers, your strangers, and an invisible network of algorithms collecting your data directly from your mind's eye", audience members will receive the chance to enter a virtual reality paradise of their choosing in front of the remaining audience for an unreproducible interactive media experience.

In Spring 2017, Cara Francis workshopped Happy To See You at Dixon Place's Little Theater and at the Theater Development Fund's Performeteria at Baruch College. The show was previously developed at the Contemporary Performance Network's Special Effects Festival. The following summer, Francis brought the production to the Print Screen Festival in Tel Aviv and to Automata Arts in Los Angeles. This fall, the show returns to New York City's West Village in the iconic basement performance space, The Collapsable Hole, now proudly presented by The New York Neo-Futurists. Francis has been an active member of the New York Neo-Futurists since 2008, writing and performing in Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, The Complete and Condensed Stage Directions of Eugene O'Neill Vol. 1 & 2, Soft Hydraulics, (Un)Afraid, and The Soup Show. Her other performance and installation works include Stand and Remote and have been performed at New York cultural landmarks such as The New Museum, The Knockdown Center and Dixon Place as well as internationally in Tel Aviv and in Amsterdam.

Happy To See You will be performed at The Collapsable Hole, located at 55 Bethune Street (between Washington and West Street) New York, NY. The show opens tonight, October 12 at 8pm. Weekday performances are October 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20 at 8pm. Weekend performances are October 14, 15, 21, 22 at 7pm. There will be an additional 9pm performance scheduled on Saturday October 14 and 21. Tickets are $20 general admission and are on sale now at nynf.org or 866-811-4111.

The New York Neo-Futurists are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers. The single unifying element of all Neo-Futurist work is that it is performed from the perspective of absolute honesty. The performers always appear as themselves on stage, speaking directly from their own perspective. The Neo-Futurist aim to create an unreproducible living newspaper of the comic and tragic, the political and personal, the visceral and experimental. Since opening in Brooklyn in 2004, the New York Neo-Futurists have premiered over 4,500 plays and have become a downtown New York institution. In addition to performing Too Much Light Makes The Baby Goes Blind for 12 years, the New York Neo-Futurists have been a stalwart presence in the Off-Off Broadway community with their full-length productions, having won numerous Innovative Theatre Awards and Drama Desk nominations including the 2016 IT award for Best Production of a Musical for Steve: A Docu-Musical. Beginning in 2017 the New York Neo-Futurists, in collaboration with their sister companies in Chicago and San Francisco, began producing The Infinite Wrench every Friday and Saturday night in the East Village. Collaborations among New York Neo-Futurists have led to landmark cultural hits including Urinetown: The Musical and the Welcome to Night Vale podcast/touring show.

IF YOU GO:

Happy To See You
An Interactive Media Performance
By Cara Francis
Performed by Cara Francis, Daniel Mirsky, and You.
Technical Collaborator: Daniel Mirsky
General Manager: Emily Pojman

Tickets can be purchased for $20 at nynf.org, 866-811-4111 or at the door. For groups sales 10+, email info@nynf.org or call 347.871.6365

Performance Schedule:
Thursday, October 12 - 8pm
Friday, October 13 - 8pm
Saturday, October 14 - 7pm & 9pm
Sunday, October 15 - 7pm
Tuesday, October 17 - 8pm
Wednesday, October 18 - 8pm
Thursday, October 19 - 8pm
Friday, October 20 - 8pm
Saturday, October 21 - 7pm & 9pm
Sunday, October 22 - 7pm

At The Collapsable Hole, located at 55 Bethune St, New York, NY 10014

Photo Credit: Luke Palmer.