Information For Foreigners

The play includes twenty different scenes featuring a range of characters and story lines. For example, in scene three the group visits a room in which a girl in wet clothes is sitting in a chair, and man yells at her and gives her a gun. In scene four, the audience witnesses a recreation of the Milgram experiment. In the last scene, each of the guides leads their groups into one large room to watch the final scene together. The guides ask the audience to stand against the wall, leaving space in the center, which is where the remainder of the show takes place.^[1]

The play introduces the audience to two levels of performance where they are shown both finished scenes, as well as what appear to be private and unfinished moments.^[2] Critic W. B. Worthen notes that "In many respects, Information for Foreigners is a play about its audience... the Milgram experiment provides a kind of metaphor for the audience's function... in that observation repeatedly involves the audience in a kind of deference to authority."^[2]