Playcebo is a work by eight cousins that is constantly in development. Like play, its creators believe. Playcebo will never meet its final form, but is always in flux and open to new possibilities. What began in 2015 as Playtime, a space where audience members could express themselves through authentic play, became in 2016, Playcebo: the Experience Experience, a work that aimed to problematize the idea of play in an increasingly work-oriented world and the idea of experience in a world where the experience economy has become an inescapable reality.

In developing this production, the cousins, specifically, Chris, Joey, and Christine, have continuously attempted to define play, but by doing so they realized that their endeavor to pin down play–to restrict it to a limited form–is its antithesis.

This year, they want to center the production on the transformative and fractal nature of play in light of family, memory, history, and, subsequently, the larger community as they investigate what it means to be at play.