Social Alchemix (Live!) From a live event held in Chelsea running under the banner of Cocktail Party Social Experiment, -Transformed- into an online night of performative party game and intimate conversation

A fantastic way to spend an evening with drinks and sharing conversations with different people across the map

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. Tickets start at $15.15, with subsidized and generous pricing options. Reservations can be made via www.socialalchemix.com/live; individual Zoom invitations are distributed by email before the show. 

Wil Petre hosts Social Alchemist after-party conversation

The link will take you to an Eventbrite page with a short survey about audience members willing to just observe or, observe and participate, your social media handle, your pronouns. From that point on, it is a carefully curated experience that eases this on-screen fatigue of everyday life now. Every performance is different, you can have from 9 people to 20 people to whatever number. The experiment starts in a Zoom room and the host invites the guests who chose to participate, to draw from an alchemical deck of tarot-like cards which in turn generate conversation prompts  – questions such as: “What does community mean to you?” 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 in different rooms if they feel so inclined.

A great experience to log in both alone or in the company of your spouse or family members. The evening just rolls out organically with all these existential questions that now hit differently after living a year in isolation due to a pandemic, while cheering and zipping a cocktail in between, it cannot get better than that. After seeing different types of performances online both in English and Spanish for over a year, Social Alchemist (Live!) is in my top three. I totally invite you to try it out. Last performance this month is March 27. Check the website for dates and times. You can also support by pre-ordering your own kit on KICKSTARTER. 

Wil Petre Host and Creator of Social Alchemist Live!

“I created the Social Alchemix card deck and SOCIAL ALCHEMIX (LIVE!) to give people the tools to overcome the anxiety of striking up a real conversation, all the while retraining their ears to listen,” says Petre, whose first-hand knowledge of how meaningful and healing a conversation comes from years of experience as an NYC bartender. “In a society where social media-dominated communication induces feelings of alienation and detachment, I am interested in creating intimate experiences that blur the line between performance and an intimate connection.  With a pandemic thrown into an already toxically divisive culture, it is deeply important to speak with strangers with a remembered sense of curiosity, and not with suspicion or skepticism,” Wil Petre.

Wil Petre (Concept, Host) is a performer, director, and experience designer specializing in intimate performance in public spaces. He has been praised by The New York Times as “a supremely charming actor who finds every laugh in the script and many that aren’t.” Notable recent appearances include Third Rail Projects' 2016 show The Grand Paradise, of which he was an original cast member; Wil was also an original creative cast member of Queen of the Night, the 2015 Drama Desk recipient for Unique Theatrical Experience. Petre has also worked with The Civilians, Witness Relocation, Minute Zero, Collective Museum, Theater Mitu, and Les Freres Corbusier/Alex Timbers, among others, and appeared on stage at such important NYC venues as Playwright's Horizons, Cherry Lane Theater, La MaMa ETC, St. Ann's Warehouse, and Ars Nova. Outside the city, he performed nationwide and internationally, including appearances at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and in Edinburgh Festival Fringe. He also works in film and TV.

The Alchemical Deck