Foreign Radical

Abstract

Theatre Conspiracy’s Foreign Radical is an interactive, multimedia theatre show with multilingual elements in Farsi and Arabic. Thirty participants enter an intriguing theatrical game that explores security, profiling, freedom of expression, and privacy in the age of cybersurveillance. Mobile throughout the performance, the participants collaborate, compete, investigate, debate, and spy on each other. The Foreign Radical set is divided into four quadrants where participants, depending on personal and group responses to various questions posed by the game’s ‘host,’ witness different perspectives on the action. They are at times divided into groups or left all alone to gather evidence from dramatic scenes and documentary media that colour their views and how they play the game. Each performance is unique in that the audience dynamic influences the outcome. The show was co-created by Theatre Conspiracy artistic producer Tim Carlson (writer), Jeremy Waller (director), Kathleen Flaherty (dramaturge), David Mesiha (sound design/original music/technical direction), Cande Andrade (video design), Florence Barrett (stage management), and performers Milton Lim and Aryo Khakpour. It premiered at The Cultch in Vancouver in 2015 and has been presented by the Carrefour festival in Quebec (2017), Canada Hub at Edinburgh Festival Fringe (2017), and High Performance Rodeo in Calgary (2018). It has been awarded the 2015 Critics Choice Innovation prize in Vancouver and an Edinburgh Fringe First Award 2017, as well as being chosen by Quebec critics as one of the top-five shows from outside the province in 2017.