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Matteo Scammell in New Paradise Laboratories' The Adults, at the Painted Bride Art Center (detail). Photo by Plate 3 Photography.

Questions of Practice: Whit MacLaughlin on Responsibility

Questions of Practice: Whit MacLaughlin on Responsibility

When asked about his sense of ethical responsibility in creating work, Whit MacLaughlin of New Paradise Laboratories responded with a reflection on his place in the performance world. Though he says he’s not “chronicling an age,” he feels a responsibility “to render things as accurately as I can, in terms of what I see my world to be, and the place that I have in it, and that the people that I love have in it.”

Whit MacLaughlin of New Paradise Laboratories on responsibility. Filmed at The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage on November 17, 2014.

Obie and Barrymore Award-winning theater artist Whit MacLaughlin is the Artistic Director of New Paradise Laboratories (NPL), an experimental performance ensemble which he founded in 1996. He recently directed and collaborated on the writing of The Adults, a Center-funded theater piece in the 2014 Fringe Festival that drew rave reviews. He is the recipient of a 2002 Pew Fellowship, as well as other national and local fellowships.