Won Edinburgh Fringe First award 2017.

Since its premiere in 2015, Foreign Radical has been seen by over 120 audiences nationally and internationally. The show was most recently presented in Ottawa and Montreal in French in 2020.

Foreign Radical invites 30 participants into 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 play areas 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.

A recipient of a Jessie Award for Critics’ Choice Innovation, Foreign Radical is an interactive, multimedia experience with multilingual elements in English, Farsi and Arabic. Each performance is unique in that the audience dynamic influences the outcome.

April - May, 2020 | Talk is Free Festival | Toronto

March 2020 | Théâtre aux Écuries | Montréal

February 2020 | La Nouvelle Scène | Ottawa

October 2018 | artsdepot | London, UK

September 2018 | Paint the Town Festival | Medway, UK

September 2018 | Heads Up Festival | Hull, UK

September 2018 | New Theatre Royal Portsmouth – StateHouse | Portsmouth, UK

January 2018 | High Performance Rodeo | Calgary

August 2017 | Edinburgh Fringe Festival | Edinburgh, Scotland

June 2017 | Carrefour international de théâtre Festival | Québec City

February 2017 | Studio 1398 | Vancouver

July 2016 | Shadbolt Centre for the Arts | Burnaby

April 2015 | The Cultch | Vancouver

✯✯✯✯✯ “It’s a show that gets under your skin.” — The Scotsman

✯✯✯✯ “Theatre Conspiracy has created a boundary-pushing new work in Foreign Radical.” — The Skinny
✯✯✯✯ “This is a clever, provocative show. [...] Foreign Radical is urgent, timely and necessary.” — The List

✯✯✯✯ “Relevant, provocative and disturbing.” — Broadway World

✯✯✯✯ “This thrilling interactive experience sticks close the soul.” — A Younger Theatre

✯✯✯✯ “An imaginative and entertaining piece of interactive theatre that raises serious questions without lecturing the audience.” — The Reviews Hub

Foreign Radical was co-created by Tim Carlson, Jeremy Waller, David Mesiha, Kathleen Flaherty, Milton Lim, Aryo Khakpour, Florence Barrett and Cande Andrade. It was developed with the assistance of Playwrights Theatre Centre, The Cultch and Banff Centre, and premiered at The Cultch in 2015.

Foreign Radical is a devised co-creation by original team members Tim Carlson, Jeremy Waller, Kathleen Flaherty, David Mesiha, Aryo Khakpour and Milton Lim.

Production Credits:

Direction: Jeremy P. Waller & Tim Carlson
Script : Tim Carlson
Performers: Milton Lim, Aryo Khakpour (original cast); Mehdi Darvish, Marilyn Perreault and Anjela Magpantay (touring cast).
Sound & Music & Technical Direction: David Mesiha
Video: Cande Andrade
Lighting design: Kyla Gardiner
Dramaturgy : Kathleen Flaherty (Playwrights Theatre Centre)
French translation: Lyne Barnabe
Early dramaturgy: Bruce Barton (Centre for Drama, University of Toronto)
Costume Design for The Host: Sasha Schaepe (UK Tour 2018)

Supported by Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, Province of B.C., City of Vancouver Cultural Services, The Hamber Foundation, The Cultch, Playwrights Theatre Centre, Vancouver Foundation, Hawthorn Foundation, University of Toronto Centre for Drama. Theatre and Performance Studies and The Banff Centre. We acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.