For FATEBOOK, which takes place across real and virtual spaces, New Paradise Laboratories auditioned performers via YouTube. Odd, perhaps, but very sensible, considering the actors have to work across media over the course of the summer.

To ease you into it, we’ll be running one audition tape from the cast members every day. Then join us at Arts Bank for a meet-the-artist event and learn more about how FATEBOOK will come together. Director Whit MacLaughlin will screen video bits from and about the characters, and discuss the process of online character development and profile building, the creation of a virtual community around the show, and dueling ideas about presence and identity. And some of the FATEBOOK cast will be there, so you’ll get to meet the characters? the actors? both? at the post-event reception. That identity thing is slippery.

Wednesday, July 8 at 7:00 pm, at the Arts Bank (corner of Broad and South streets), Philadelphia. Free, but please RSVP to robin@livearts-fringe.org.

–Nicholas Gilewicz