Underground Railroad Game — ARS Nova

Overview

The number of phrases you can add the word 'game' to without causing any serious commotion is almost boundless. For brevity's sake, we haven't listed them here. But Underground Railroad — i.e. the 19th century movement which smuggled slaves out of America — is one dazzling exception.

This message appears not to have reached American theatremakers Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, whose masochistically unflinching take on race relations in the United States is headed to the Malthouse Theatre.

In Underground Railroad Game, the audience play high school students in a history lesson about the American slave trade. But this isn't one you can sit up the back and snooze through. Kidwell and Sheppard catalogue the ongoing history of racial intolerance in America, then hit it point blank with an R-rated satire bat. They may not be able to change history, but they're going to get an uncomfortable amount of it on you before you're allowed to leave.

Underground Railroad Game is the type of theatre that leaves scorch marks on the walls. See it before they turn the Malthouse into a smoking (albeit enlightened) ruin.

Image: Ben Arons.