Wil Petre, an NYC-based cocktail guru and a performer best known for his off-Broadway work (including Third Rail Projects’ The Grand Paradise) invites the audience to join SOCIAL ALCHEMIX (LIVE!) – an intoxicating hybrid of intimate online game night, storytelling, and aligned serendipity held on Zoom.

Is it possible to have a meaningful conversation with a perfect stranger in our socially distanced and lonely world? This question has inspired the theatre artist and storyteller Wil Petre to create SOCIAL ALCHEMIX (LIVE!) – a unique, Zoom-based project designed to conquer the Covid-era isolation. This virtual gathering extends on Petre’s participatory live performance series A Cocktail Party Social Experiment, which debuted in 2019. In SOCIAL ALCHEMIX (LIVE!,) everybody is asked to turn off their cell phones for the duration of the event; the idea is to enter the shared space, skip the small talk and get into the good stuff while sipping favorite drinks at the comfort of one’s home. The host invites the participants to draw from an alchemical deck of tarot-like cards which in turn generate conversation prompts – questions such as: “What rules are meant to be broken?” or “How would you like to be remembered?” The night is designed for players and voyeurs alike and concludes with a digital after-party in which the guests can interact freely using avatars and take the conversation private if they feel so inclined.

*Internet connection and a basic (free) Zoom account are required. The second part of the show uses a free platform Gather that does not require any additional software to be installed but the latest version of Chrome or Firefox is needed to participate.