THE FIFTH PLACE
A ROOM WITH NEW RULES
WHAT IS IT?
Nightclub meets absurdist behavior lab
Dramaturgical glitch swarm
Interpersonal derangement LARP
Language mutation boot camp
Nursery for whole and half wits
THE FIFTH PLACE
The Fifth Place is an invitation-only space for experimental interaction. A clandestine gathering for high-level play between strangers, guided by invented rules of communication and social behavior.
You arrive alone. For the next 90 minutes, you're embedded in a live protocol of roles and rules that twist familiar instincts and suspend the habits and facts of your everyday self.
You enter a constructed world with its own alien logic for how to speak, move, signal, and collide —one built in real time with the strangers around you.
Attendance is free. Capacity is limited. Manhattan location disclosed upon invitation.
Complete the form below to be placed in an upcoming gathering.
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ABOUT
The Fifth Place was created in 2023 to engineer a new kind of gathering space—one devoted to irrationality, invention, and behavioral poetics.
Each session is devised by the Director of Behavior, sometimes in collaboration with artists, theorists, and rogue psychologists. It’s a charged system for testing alternate modes of relation, inside a sealed and shifting frame.
Events unfold inside selected Manhattan spaces, often without the venue’s awareness.
Director of Behavior: Michael Portnoy
Inquiries: director@thefifthplace.org