Enter a small intimate performance space where the audience and the actors are connected by the openness of the room. The audience mills around, talking amongst themselves in the minutes before the show begins. Slowly, a dark ominous sound starts to rise, building second by second. With every extra decibel of volume the light dims just a bit more. The change is subtle but present and effectively raises the crowd's attention level, and climaxes in darkness and sudden silence. A reporter stands in the middle of the stage to quote:

"As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances there's a twighlight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." --Judge William O. Douglas

With that Fear Up embarks upon the task of rallying the audience to save themselves from the darkness. Although Fear Up is neither the best play that I have ever seen, nor the worst, it is a profound and necessary piece of work. This play answers the founding fathers' battle cry for an active citizenry. Through a minimalist "docudrama" of The War in Iraq, which is all but a minute problem, Fear Up inspires the essential reflection that leads to change. Nine actors wholly invest themselves to breathe life into 20 different roles and enhance the show with various sound effects made from their mouths.

From a purely artistic perspective Fear Up draws viewers in by utilizing the personal side of war. This is not simply an academic portrayal of the aftermath of invasions, a criticism of the government, or unbalanced propaganda. Fear Up is the human story of invasion. From the Tipton Three to the average Iraqi women to soldiers and their families back home, the plight of the individual characters draws viewers into the story. As audience members become emotionally vulnerable, they become open to change and open to international understanding. We are rattled by bombs along with the Iraqi women, and begin to break down along with the soldier's wife when she says, "You don't just enlist a soldier. You really enlist the whole family."

Through seemingly ridiculous scenes that highlight our absurdity and ignorance, and imitations of American pop culture, listing Yoko Ono's music as a form of torture, and suggesting a new reality television show that places 14 Bush supporters in Faluja, Fear Up breaches the topic of Americans' assumptions about Iraq. Through the voice of the three Iraqi women Fear Up questions whether our assumptions have changed at all since we entered Iraq, but sadly they haven't. The cast belts out in a corny chorus of "the truth" leading to the Iraqi women enlightening us that before the War on Iraq women wore jeans and T-shirts, they were free, the fundamentalists kept their heads down, they had running water, they did not live in tents, were not uneducated, held jobs in traditionally male dominated fields and so on. Iraq was civilized. Iraq is not another Afghanistan, as the Tipton three say. When they share their story of being wrongfully taken as prisoners, people have a chance to know what is going on in Guantanamo.

Fear Up exists to serve the same purpose, to shed light upon the brutal tactics of Fear Up, which the American military uses to get confessions from prisoners. Fear Up is meant as an exposé of the horrors of Iraq, however at times it drags on as a monotonous timeline of the war and repetition of the daily commentary on the quagmire, including comparisons to Vietnam, and cheap shots aimed at the Bush administration. The format of the play rarely changes, leaving the reporter to continuously push the play by writing articles on the happenings. That said, The War on Iraq continues to drag on and an upbeat depiction of Guantanamo and Baghdad would have been entirely inappropriate. One can only hope that as Fear Up's message resonates with the audience and helps to spark change, even though it is presented without the glitter of today's sanitized, circus media.