Press

Proto-type’s work is critically acclaimed in the US and the UK. Read below for selections from reviews of our work.

Selected Quotes:

An immensely satisfying slice of cultural history – part fantasy-idyll, part disturbing analogy of a self contained world on the brink of destruction … a dynamic cut-up of parody pulp, cultural history and meta-theatrical angst whose linguistic and stylistic disorientation is mirrored and amplified by the shifting planes and angles of live-feed close ups on the flat screen monitors ranged between the live performance space and audience …This is a production which plays with our sense of performance, and our sense of emotional as well as spatial depth … an exhilarating theatrical experience.

Total Theatre on Virtuoso (working title)

 

This is beautifully crafted stuff that has a broader relevance and audience than a traditional theatre company based in one city could manage.

Tina Jackson, The Metro (Manchester) on Virtuoso (working title)

 

The storm is particularly satisfying, with the soothing, exciting noise of a rich, lush, all-encompassing rain that the audience can almost feel. Mr. Petralia’s script is often quite poetic. (‘Sometimes time has holes in it.’) And the production, which he also directed, flirts with the feel of a supernatural, psychological thriller.

Anita Gates, The New York Times

 

Whisper cleverly mines the dramatic tension between ‘reality’ and the seductive power of technology … it’s hard to ignore the amplified voices seductively whispering in your ear, especially when they reassure you, ‘You like it when emotions loop that way.

Paul Menard, Backstage

 

Whisper is quite simply an extraordinary piece of theatre.

Carole Gordon, What’s On Stage

 

Proto-type Theater’s Whisper uses the headphone technology in Contains Violence to spin a story that unfolds inside your head like a nightmare…the mixture of foley soundscapes and the strange melding and disconnect between image and sound sucks you in.

Lyn Gardner, The Guardian

 

Whisper creates an aurally imaginative and multi-faceted portrait of fast and fragmented modern city life and produces an ambitious and unusual experience.

Matina Von Holm, Total Theatre

 

Director Peter S. Petralia is a master at creating atmosphere. His hallucinatory sound design, which keeps speeding up and slowing down, nicely fits the hazy set. Petralia has a cinematographer’s eye, and some of his stage pictures are in the spirit of classic black and white Gothic horror. But he, of course, is working on a more modern, Freudian type of fright. The monsters of today’s Beckett influenced drama don’t lurk in Transylvania; they fester in the subconscious… Keep an eye out for this adventurous group…

Jason Zinoman, Time Out NY

 

Of the three productions that I saw, the most daring, experimental, and theatrically engaging is Third Person by Proto-type Theater.

Dan Bacalzo, Theatermania

 

Peter S. Petralia’s The Christmas Suicides, depicts a man lying on his back in front a mirror. This man, Sam, recalls for us all the Christmases when he tried to kill himself. With jolting simplicity, Petralia cuts right to the heart of profound sadness and its myriad sources.

Martin Denton, nytheatre.com

 

Three Ring is an exquisitely moody work…the cast’s Olympian energy also has the confidence to execute Petralia’s odd, endearing vision.

Leonard Jacobs, Backstage Magazine for Live from Downtown on DCTV

 

Cheap Thrills is brave, loud, unique and provocative. There is much about this nightmarish brothel-family epic that would make Tim Burton, John Waters and David Lynch proud. Audiences should not expect an emotionally safe or comfortable experience from Proto-type’s newest production. But they should find much to ponder and enjoy.

Daniel Gallant, The Greenwich Village Gazette

 

Peter S. Petralia is rapidly becoming downtown theatre’s premiere auteur: nobody can conjure a milieu with so much specificity and precision as he can… Cheap Thrills is experimental theatre of the most exciting and fundamental kind. Peter S. Petralia, the director-playwright-designer responsible for this weird, intoxicating show, is a true visionary: he has a unique take on how theatre should work, and this show, second in a trilogy that started with last year’s Bunny’s Last Night in Limbo, is a living laboratory where all of us—artists and audience alike—can explore the dynamics of a form that is breathtakingly original. Hence, experimental theatre: the actual kind…one of the more adventurous, innovative, and worthy cutting-edge groups that I know of.

Martin Denton, nytheatre.com

 

Bunny’s dreamlike world chaotically exists somewhere between John Water’s white-trash Baltimore and Lewis Carroll’s psychedelic Wonderland…Produced by the always-inventive Proto-type, this follow-up to 2000s Bunny’s Last Night in Limbo is an intelligent and entertaining merger of avant-garde and conventional performance styles.

Robert Kent, NEXT Magazine