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"Alpha team takes the first room, then Bravo team—the team I led—takes the second. Once the first room is clear, my team enters the building and lines up against the wall next to the door of the room we are about to enter. This is called a ‘stack.’ Once the door is kicked in, the stack flows into the room.”

Do you know what that is? That’s the simple mechanics of what patrol troopers do in Iraq every day—entering hundreds of rooms, never knowing what lies on the other side. I didn’t know how a stack worked—or how unbelievably dangerous it is to go through that broken door—until I spent an afternoon with Jason Christopher Hartley.

He’s a Iraq veteran, a memoirist and blogger, and he’s currently working on a brand new performance art piece called Surrender. The play will dress the audience up in battle fatigues and run them through real training exercises—letting civilians feel what a combat situation is really like. 

Today, Hartley gives us a sneak peak of what Surrender will look like when it premieres in July--part of my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions.

In the spirit of Jack Nicholson’s mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality conversations with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing.

Jason Boog:
The Surrender workshop was one of the most overwhelming theater experiences I've ever had. Could you describe your project for my readers? How did your workshop audiences respond to the project? What can we expect in July? 

Jason Christopher Hartley:

You take part in the action and view it from the perspective of an infantryman, not the perspective of a theatergoer sitting in a folding chair.

It is simply a chance for you to train to do what is known in the infantry as "battle drill six-alpha", the meat and potatoes part of house-to-house, room-to-room fighting also known as "close quarters battles". 

For me, it's just Josh Fox asking me to do what I typically do in the Army and adding some theatrics.  Think paint-ball meets Disneyland.  Something between being participatory like a sport, but heavily guided like a haunted house.  It's theater, just a little more immersive.

Surrender will be in three acts.  First you will train how to fight.  Then you will perform combat operations.  Then you will be back home.  You will be part of a squad of nine people consisting of two four-man teams and a squad leader. 

There will be several squads performing in parallel as part of a platoon.  You will have a uniform and a rifle.