Photo by Paul Kilpatrick/Morning Star Productions
Escape from the Gulag - Morning Star Productions
The time is Autumn 1952. The place is a labor camp in the Soviet Union. Your objective? “To escape and survive.” As real as that sounds, this is the new interactive theatrical experience staged in the outdoors by Morning Star Productions, entitled Escape from the Gulag.
With this MSP experience, audience members literally get into the part. As audience members enter the outdoor trail event—10 at a time—they’re given a simple costume piece as well as a bio of an actual prisoner who spent time within the Gulag system. With this actual identity, the audience members/prisoners are then falsely accused of a “crime” at the Interrogation Tent. Next, comes the judge, who tries the audience members/prisoners and finds them guilty. It’s then back to the prisoners barracks.
However, “prisoners” are able to secure a code which they’ll need to decode to get past the guards at the guard tower. Given the 90 minutes for the entire “process,” the main question is: can the “prisoners” escape in time? They have one hour to do so.
And according to MSP, one of the patrons attending is the daughter of an actual Gulag survivor.
Her father’s story: “He was conscripted into the German army in World War II, later captured by the Russian army during the war and sent to a Soviet camp in Siberia. He was in his 20s at the time. He did say that he saw many die at the inhumane treatment from starvation, disease, malnutrition, cold and lack of proper clothing. After being released, he experienced and witnessed the same treatment on the cattle car going back to Germany. The men were still starving at this point. He had kept his wedding ring under his tongue for two years and on the return journey he saw a woman on the train line, cooling bread on her windowsill. He offered her the ring in exchange for the bread and this kept him going until he reached his destination.”
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Art models itself on real life in Escape from the Gulag. Doing so, it honors the actual heroes who survived to tell the stories ... and for those who did not.
Escape from the Gulag runs Sept. 25-26 and Oct. 30-31 at the outdoor trail behind Wooded Hills Church, 777 Hwy 164, Colgate, seven miles west of Germantown. Masks are recommended for those audience members unvaccinated for inside buildings. For more information, visit: www.morningstarproductions.org/or call: 414-228-5220, ext. 119.
