Hell Bound

Hollywood horror films and amusement park rides have shown us that people can enjoy being frightened. Being taken out of a normal “safe space” can be an exhilarating experience. The latest project of Theatre Nemesis involves a simulated hostage crisis. The audience is not expected to participate and will not be directly threatened or menaced but, like it or not, they will be characters in an intense drama that will unfold without the comforting presence of the Fourth Wall.

Have Mr. Monday and his homicidal cohorts, The Iscariot Effect, convinced themselves that they are part of a coordinated global overthrow of the One World Government? Or are they merely seeking the quickest and bloodiest road out of anonymity? In either case, they have taken the entire Symposium on the Future of Nursing hostage and have released a series of demands that alternate between vague and nonsensical. Mr. Monday, the charismatic charmer; Sweet Marie, a “most beautiful variety of scorpion;” Obit, the human bomb; and Kubrick, the man who’s getting it all on film. This is The Iscariot Effect on their first and perhaps last night of notoriety.

A piercing indictment of modern media’s hyper-fixation on the violent and visceral, Hell Bound will enclose its audience in a spellbinding simulation of something we frequently reassure ourselves “could never happen in Canada.”

Tickets: $15, available at The ARTS Project box office, 519-642-2767.