Surrender

Surrender is an interactive theater event which simulates the training, deployment to Iraq and return of a platoon of soldiers, experienced and enacted by the audience of the show each night.
Upon arrival, the audience is issued boots, a uniform and a replica M-4 rifle.
Act 1: TRAINING – The audience is taught basic combat techniques by Jason Hartley including room clearing, handling of weapons and the engagement of enemies in a 100-minute crash course.
Act II: WAR – The audience is divided into squads (with a member of International WOW as their squad leader) and are sent into a room-to-room combat simulation. They enter a series of areas–a house where suspected insurgents are hiding, a Humvee on its way to a raid, a barracks complete with bunks and a PlayStation console, and a military prison, among others. In each room they play out various situations, implementing their training. Each audience member carries a casualty card in their pocket containing their fate, some are “killed” in simulated IED explosions, some suffer traumatic brain injury, some are paralyzed, most survive without being “wounded.”
Act III: HOME – The soldiers/audience come back home. The theater returns to a traditional stage set, with the audience and actors divided by a proscenium, but the audience involvement in the show continues. Seven Scenes are played which depict the fates of soldiers returning to the US: a military funeral, a Walter Reed rehab session, a return to work scene in a meat packing plant, an uncomfortable family dinner, etc. The scenes will be staged so that audience members who have been through the installation play key roles. Audience members are called by name onto the main stage, seated inside the scene (In a wheelchair, at the dinner table, at a podium for a eulogy) and told to read lines at key points on overhead video screens teleprompting their lines in a “Dramatic-Karaoke” fashion. The evening ends with Jason Hartley conducting a talk-back in the guise of a book-tour Q and A and a return of audience members’ clothes and belongings.