Educational video games suck. Even if the kid with the controller doesn’t realize that the “game” he’s playing is actually edutainment and demands higher mental functioning, it’s a pretty safe bet that he’d still rather be blowing up heads in Gears of War than hopping to the next lily pad with a prime number on it. But what happens when the violent, war-driven video games are the educational ones? How are people—particularly soldiers—affected when they’re taught to kill in a virtual world, and expected to translate that into reality?
That very dilemma prompted playwright Christine Evans to write The Underpass, a work-in-progress play that will run on Friday, Nov. 19 and Saturday, Nov. 20 in the Davis Center.
“I became very interested in this question of what happens to the bodies,” Evans said. “[Military training] uses virtual violence to model war, but human bodies have to go there and be involved in war. What is the relationship between the virtual world of the training … and the physical experience of the human body in war?”
The play discusses this question through the experiences of Michael, a homeless veteran suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, as he interacts with his fellow homeless people, and through the use of video screens showing a series of game-like sequences. It demonstrates the haunting, detrimental effect of war on Michael’s psyche, which worsened when he realized that the people he killed in battle were not the soulless cartoons of his video game training. Originally commissioned by director Joseph Megel as one of six short works involving technology for last Feburary’s Collaborations: Humanities Arts and Technologies Festival in North Carolina, this “ghost story for the digital war age” became a feature when Megel saw its innovative use of technology.
“[Evans] made technology a character in the play, rather than it [just] being about that technology,” Megel said.
But although it is no longer a short, festival piece, The Underpass is not yet a full-length play. It has been performed numerous times since the festival, but oddly enough, the play itself is not actually finished yet. Evans and Megel consider each rehearsal and performance a “workshop,” where different episodes of the plot’s memory-driven structure are reworked and rewritten.
“We have a sense of where we’re coming from and where we’re going, but it’s the journey itself that feels like it still has a lot more design to be done,” Megel said.
After initial audience reactions which Evans described as “intrigued and fascinated,” the next stop for the play’s development is Georgetown. Working in the Gonda Theater, Evans and Megel collaborated with multimedia designer Jared Mezzocchi and a cast including Professor Nadia Mahdi and student Nikki Massoud (COL ’11). Contrary to how most see the arts at Georgetown, Megel praised the University’s theater facilities and resources, hailing it as “the perfect place for incubating this new work.”
Evans is optimistic that the play will benefit from a Georgetown audience.
“I’m very open,” she said. “I don’t know what’s going to happen.”
She hopes that the work-in-progress play will get a push towards completion from war-game-loving students—or at least the ones who have already beaten the new Call of Duty.
