When we were teenagers we started making ritualistic performances together. We all performed; there was no ”outside eye”. In these performances we played mythological versions of ourselves who endured horrible ordeals, suffered through nightmare America, and died terrible deaths. These performances were intense, disorienting, hypnotic, and yearned to evoke trance states, awaken critical consciousness, and attack the status quo.

We now believe that performance can awaken critical consciousness in both audience and player. We believe that performance can be a mechanism for attacking evil and breaking through bad social coding. We believe that exorcism, time travel, and raising the dead are performable states of being. We believe that performance is a way to hallucinate with your friends and your community and fight evil at the same time.

We have created nine shows: Why I Want To Shoot The President (1998), Wreck the Airline Barrier (1999), The Zero Yard (2000), Victory at the Dirt Palace (2002), Pugilist Specialist (2003), Switch Triptych (2005), Hearts of Man (2007), Freedom Club (2010), and Sophie Gets the Horns. (2012).

Our work has been presented in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, San Francisco, Belfast, Dublin, New York, Philadelphia, Stuttgart, Minneapolis, and Burlington. Plays written by Adriano Shaplin for the Riot Group have been published by Oberon Books, Playscripts Inc, Yale School of Drama's Theater magazine and have been produced in translation in Greece, Austria, Denmark, Brazil, the Netherlands, and India. The Riot Group is Adriano Shaplin, Stephanie Viola, Andrew Friedman, Paul Schnabel, Maria Shaplin.