It can be difficult to pin a label on Foreign Radical. Even the well-crafted press release doesn’t quite answer the question: What is it, exactly?
“I’ve been asked to describe it numerous times, and it’s like, ‘Well, it’s a dramatic documentary installation multimedia theatre experience that’s participatory,’” says Tim Carlson, artistic producer of Vancouver’s Theatre Conspiracy and writer and co-director (with Jeremy Waller) of Foreign Radical. The elaborate production resurfaces in Vancouver this month after a successful run in 2015, during which it won a Jessie Award for Critics’ Choice Innovation and earned its place on several best-in-theatre lists.
Foreign Radical is a means to many different ends. It’s an interactive multimedia theatrical game – with multilingual elements in Farsi and Arabic – that explores security, profiling, freedom of expression, and privacy in the age of cyber-surveillance. Each performance is unique in that the audience dynamic influences the outcome.
In 2017’s fraught and ever-evolving geo-political landscape, Foreign Radical is especially poignant. “Unfortunately, and ironically, it seems to be the case that the show just keeps getting more relevant all the time,” says Carlson. “Best-case scenario: it would become irrelevant. But we’re speaking on a day where the new administration in the US is talking about bringing back things like black sites. That was the worst of the worst of post-9/11 reaction, so the stakes seem to be getting higher all the time.”
The Foreign Radical experience is immersive. The theatre space at Studio 1398 is divided into four quadrants. The audience of 30 is on its feet the entire time, and “depending on your personal opinions or your choices in various game-play elements, you might see dramatic scenes from different perspectives than the rest of the audience, and, therefore, that might skew your opinion of what’s happening,” Carlson explains. There are opportunities to debate and trade opinion, and as the show progresses, it becomes more about the social dynamic and collective opinion of that particular group. “It really is quite different show to show, and it’s fascinating to see that happen.”
Foreign Radical has changed somewhat since its critically acclaimed freshman run in 2015. “We took out some video and made more opportunities that are more tactile, where the audience is dealing with props and that kind of thing, rather than sitting back and watching documentary video,” says Carlson. “There still is some documentary video out there. But as we move forward, we want to make it more and more about the personal, the hand-to-hand experience, and less about watching media.”
The physicality of Foreign Radical means that participants who are having a difficult time with the current political climate might experience something akin to catharsis, says Carlson. “When people get in close proximity and get to know each other a little bit over the course of 75 minutes, it opens up empathy and a willingness to listen to each other that maybe wouldn’t happen online or elsewhere in a really politically polarized society, and that’s one thing that theatre can do that maybe doesn’t happen with television or with film documentary to the same degree.”
Foreign Radical runs Feb. 7-11 at Studio 1398 on Granville Island. Two performances nightly. There is no seating, but the production is wheelchair accessible. The Feb. 11 matinee will have an ASL interpreter. Tickets and info: Conspiracy.ca
