Sam Went chats about 'Red Pill' and about the broader role of the arts in addressing complex and challenging political issues.

Your play 'Red Pill' deals with the origins of the Alt-Right, can you tell us a little more about that and why you chose to write a play about it?

SW: Something I encountered again and again when talking to people about the Alt-Right was this belief that they came out of nowhere. That this army of racists, misogynists and fascists sprung out of the ground fully formed in 2016 to help Donald Trump win the Presidency, march through Charlottesville carrying tiki torches and swastika flags before devolving into a decentralised network of white nationalist terrorists. But that wasn't really the case. The story of the Alt-Right starts a couple of years earlier in 2014 when an online harassment campaign masquerading as a consumer revolt, #gamergate, exposed tens of thousands of young people to the far-right and it was these people radicalised by #gamergate who were the first recruits to the Alt-Right.

For our readers who might be unaware, can you explain a little bit what '#gamergate' was?

SW: Gamergate was an online harassment campaign directed at a number of women and non-binary people in and around the video games industry. The goal being to terrorise women and queer people until they were forced to leave the games industry. Gamergate, however, marketed itself as simply a call for “ethics in games journalism”, using a fake story about an indie game developer sleeping with a journalist for a good review as its alleged casus belli. By pitching itself as a consumer revolt rather than a hate group #gamergate was able to recruit lots of people who would not have considered themselves violent misogynists and pull them into this very misogynistic online space. Neo-Nazis and other far-right influencers then used writing and talking about #gamergate as a way to draw these people into their audience and begin radicalising them further.

What do you want audiences to take away from 'Red Pill'?

SW: The reason to write this play for me was because I think the easiest way to fight far-right movements like this is to stop them at the beginning and we have no hope of doing that if there isn't generally a better understanding of how these things start. I also think the Alt-Right and #gamergate provide a good way of showing the process of how the far-right and other extremist groups indoctrinate people and helping people to better recognise the indoctrination process will help people better protect themselves and the people they love. That's what I want people to be able to take away from this play.

What advantages are there to using theatre to talk about complex political issues like this?

SW: I don't think there is any medium as powerful as theatre when it comes to getting an audience to experience empathy. There is something unique about watching an actor who is a real person that you can see in the same room as you that creates a much stronger emotional connection than a medium where you have the separation of a screen. Using theatre we can get our audience to experience what it feels like to watch someone they care about be indoctrinated by an extremist ideology, or even how it might feel to be indoctrinated themselves. I think being able to experience these things emotionally is vital to being able to properly understand what happened.

What role do you think is the role of the arts in addressing big political stories?

SW: I think often issues like the ones we address in Red Pill can seem too big or too complicated for people to be able to engage with. But by using stories, something that I think as people we inherently understand, we can make these things more digestible. Art also offers us the opportunity to take these massive issues and focus down on the human element which is an incredibly valuable perspective that sometimes gets lost when talking about the big moments in political history. Red Pill is a political play, but its story is on a very human scale about how the Alt-Right destroys people.

In your marketing you've called Red Pill a 'political tragedy' rather than a 'political drama'. Is that a deliberate choice?

SW: Yes, because watching this play it feels more a tragedy than the dispassionate recounting of events you sometimes get with political drama. It's set during an event that really happened and it has a lot to say about that event and its consequences, but the central story of the play is the tragic fall of a single person, someone who is indoctrinated by the far-right and how that destroys them and the people around them.

What responsibilities, if any, do you think theatre has when talking about complex political issues? 

For me the most important responsibility is do the research. If you're going to be addressing topics this serious make sure you know what you're talking about. I did hundreds of hours of research on the far-right while writing Red Pill and it's really exciting for me watching the rehearsal process and seeing everyone involved in this production doing the work together and individually to learn all they can about the issues we're talking about. The commitment and enthusiasm of everyone working on this show is frankly incredible and everyone has gone above and beyond. I cannot tell you how thrilling it is for me, as a writer of political theatre, to walk into a rehearsal room and hear the actors discussing the books they've read to get to know their characters and the history of #gamergate and the Alt-Right.

You've talked about some of the heavy themes the play deals with, racism, misogyny, neo-Nazis. Have there been any challenges working on a play that talks about these issues?

SW: Safeguarding is incredibly important to everyone working on this show and we've all worked together to provide as safe a place as we possibly can while discussing very horrible things. We run regular check ins to make sure everyone is doing okay, everyone knows they can take a break whenever they need to for whatever reason and we have systems in place to make sure people have someone they can talk to if they need to, among other things. Creating a culture on the production that's focussed on making sure everyone's emotional well-being is looked after has been immensely helpful and is what has made it possible to create theatre like this in a safe way.