Milton Lim is the hyperkinetic host in Theatre Conspiracy’s smart, engaging Foreign Radical
When I attended Theatre Conspiracy’s Foreign Radical, my fellow audience members voted—virtually unanimously—to select me as the most suspicious person there. Maybe that was because I’m big and 30 years older than the rest of them, so I stood out, or maybe it was because I was writing in my notebook.
Who knows? And that’s part of the point. What arbitrary factors determine who you think is suspicious? Foreign Radical is about security, privacy, and government surveillance. The audience stays ambulatory and audience members move to different spaces in the theatre, depending on how they answer a series of questions. “Are you an atheist?” “Would you spy on others if the money was good enough?” The show is particularly concerned with the US Terrorist Watchlist. In one of the highlights, the audience, divided into two teams, debates whether or not to place a fictitious character on the list based on the contents of their backpack.
And then there’s the interview. Maybe because I was Mr. Suspicious, I was interviewed as part of the show, asked about travel. I said that I travel in search of novel experiences and that my most recent trip was to a radical faerie gathering in Oregon. Asked if I encountered anything novel on that trip, I mentioned the three-way that I had in Portland. Then they asked about that.
Want to know more? Too bad. You had to be there. Every night is different because every audience is different.
Foreign Radical is a smart, engaging, relevant show, and Theatre Conspiracy can only accommodate 20 people per performance. Foreign Radical runs until April 25 at the Vancity Culture Lab at the Cultch.
It’s this week’s pick.
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