VIRTUAL SOLITAIRE Plays FringeNYC Starting 8/17
Seattle-based playwright and performer Dawson Nichols brings his internationally celebrated solo show VIRTUAL SOLITAIRE to the 15th Annual New York Fringe Festival. VIRTUAL SOLITAIRE is a play-for-one-person about Nathan, a man lost in a full-immersion virtual entertainment. The game is a murder-mystery, and as Nathan tries to find his way out he begins to realize that this might be more than a game - someone might be intentionally keeping him online.
He surfs through more than two dozen characters in the entertainment, searching for the shifting line between VR (virtual reality) and RL (real life). And perhaps this is the mystery of the murder-mystery. And if that's true, perhaps the murder is his own. See a preview of the play at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csu81awsN-g.
VIRTUAL SOLITAIRE was named Best Play at both the Saskatoon Fringe Festival and the Edmonton Fringe Festival, and has also been seen all over Australia and the Pacific Northwest. This will be its New York première.
Dawson Nichols has written more than two dozen original plays and adaptations, including Escher's Hands, which was nominated for the National New Play Award of the American Theatre Critics Association. He is best known for his solo works which have toured extensively throughout North America and abroad. Among his full-length plays-for-one-person are I Might Be Edgar Allan Poe, which is also playing at the 2011 FringeNYC, Three Descents of Darwin, Jekyll, Stop Start, and Meet Brian Boomer. Dawson has received commissions from Seattle Children's Theatre, ACT Theatre, and Aha! Theatre. He has also received a fellowship from Artist Trust, a grant from the King County Arts Commission, and in 1997 he was nominated for the Elizabeth Osborne Emerging Playwright Award.
VIRTUAL SOLITAIRE will run for five performances only: WED 8/17 @ 7:00pm; SAT 8/20 @ 2:00pm;TUE 8/23 @ 2:30pm; THUR 8/25 @ 4:00pm; FRI 8/26 @ 8:00pm. All performances will be at The Players Theater at 115 MacDougal Street. Tickets are $15 in advance at fringenyc.org or by calling 866-468-7619. $18 at the door.
