Morning Star Productions 'Escape from the Gulag'

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Photo: Morning Star Productions - Facebook

Morning Star Productions 'Escape from the Gulag'

Morning Star Productions 'Escape from the Gulag'

Art imitates life imitates art ... and so the circle goes with Morning Star Productions’ revival of Escape from the Gulag. Having staged this outdoor, interactive show last September 2021, Escape takes on a whole different meaning today about what it’s like to be arrested and imprisoned in Soviet Russia. While the production takes place in 1952, its messages are as timeless as ever.  

“The decision to do the show was made over a year ago—long before the conflict in Ukraine broke out,” explains Morning Star Artistic Director Alan Atwood. “We chose it because it is a story of such great magnitude that is not well known here in the U.S. Almost all Americans know of the Holocaust Hitler unleashed under the Nazi regime but very few know of the deaths of tens of millions of innocent Russian citizens under Stalin.”

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Photo: Morning Star Productions - Facebook

Morning Star Productions 'Escape from the Gulag'

Morning Star Productions 'Escape from the Gulag'

Escape is designed to mirror real life as much as possible. The audience is given the name and identity of a real Gulag prisoner, falsely imprisoned and then given a code to escape past the guard tower in a limited amount of time. So, how the audience reacts and responds affects how the actors react and respond.

“Because of the play’s interactive nature, it is shaped largely by the actors’ performances,” emphasizes Atwood. “They are able to adapt to the responses they get from the audience, which experiences the story in groups of 10. So the performance is shaped to a large extent by how audiences tend to respond to each of the situations.”  

And audiences can expect to find themselves facing real life challenges actual prisoners faced during those times, according to cofounder Mary Atwood.    

“One character who played a blustering judge in the Interrogation Building commanded the participants to ‘stand up, sit down’ like a flippant stand-up comic whenever Stalin's name was spoken. The guard who escorts the audience to the barracks makes jokes about poor Soviet trail maintenance and suggests they trap the squirrels for food on the trail before they arrive at the prison to face the continual diet of rotten fish.”

And once an audience has managed to actually “escape” (if they indeed do), what have they found at show’s end?

“The most common response we get to our shows is ‘it seemed so real, it was like you were really there,’” says Alan Atwood.  “I think they want to experience what it would have been like to be there and take on the challenge of solving the problems, pushing through the obstacles that the people alive then were faced with.  At its best it's like stepping back in time and seeing how you would have done were you faced with the same challenges.”

Escape from the Gulag runs June 4-5 and June 11-12 at the outdoor trail behind Wooded Hills Church, 777 Hwy 164, Colgate, seven miles west of Germantown. Appropriate for ages nine and up. For more information, visit: morningstarproductions.org or call:  414-228-5220, ext. 119.