I want people to take the Red Pill movement seriously as a threat.
I have the immense pleasure of stage managing a play at the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival this summer called Culver, a two-hander in which “two co-workers get drawn into very different online worlds in the wake of the #MeToo era.” I sat down with producer, playwright, and director Julia Weisser to talk to them about their process and the topics covered in the show.
Answers have been edited for clarity.
In one sentence, what is Culver about?
JW: Culver is about what happens when two people get so caught up in their own Internet echo chambers that they can no longer speak to one another about the same subject. It’s also about the Me Too movement and the Red Pill movement.
What is the Red Pill movement?
JW: The Red Pill movement is a group of online men’s rights activists that took their metaphor from The Matrix. When you take the blue pill in the movie, you continue on blissfully ignorant. But when you take the red pill, you wake up and you see things how they really are. So these particular men’s rights activists believe that women are actually running the world and that it is men who are oppressed, so they want to get other men to “take the red pill” to see things how they really are. There’s no point trying to have real relationships with women because women are sneaky manipulators, and as sneaky manipulators actually have the upper hand in society.
This is your first time taking part in a Fringe Festival. How have you found it so far?
JW: I already loved the Fringe. I have volunteered at the Fringe Festivals in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Montreal is my favourite Fringe that I’ve partaken in so far as a volunteer. I’ve done it the past two years, so this is my third year. I’m volunteering as well as producing, and I love it. I think it has a great community feeling to it. Fringe is something where people really come together and are really generous with their time and want to help one another so that we can have the best festival possible.
For many, many months you worked with Camille Fecteau, the dramaturg for this show. Can you explain what her role as dramaturg was and how she helped the development of this play?
JW: Our stage manager, Dani Eyer, maybe you know her (laughs), suggested to me in November that I get a dramaturg, and that hadn’t occurred to me. I had thought, I’ll just do a bunch of workshops with people who’ve heard the play in [Jessica Carmichael’s] playwriting class. It didn’t occur to me to have one person to help me with the text. But it was actually a really, really brilliant idea, because Camille is as committed to this play as I am, and she is as committed to the characters. She knows the characters as intimately as I do. She really wants this play to succeed. She started over Christmas break, and then she went over the text over and over again, making sure that the character arcs and the characters were consistent and coherent. She asked me questions as the playwright when something wasn’t clear, or just ask me questions to get me thinking about the character, why the character would say that, whether it’s important for the character to say that. The play is so much better, and so much more interesting because of her and because of the work that she’s done. I don’t think that people know enough about what dramaturgy is, and I don’t think dramaturgs get enough credit, but as a playwright, I feel as though sometimes you’re in love with your own words, and you have a hard time letting something go. Camille did a lot of things, but one of the things she did was challenge me when something wasn’t really in line, when a line or a paragraph wasn’t really in line with the character.
I’ve noticed that a large portion of our team is made up of women. Was that intentional or did it just sort of happen?
JW: It’s not intentional, it did just sort of happen, but I do think that women and men respond to this play differently, and there’s a lot of other factors to take in besides gender. But if you will permit me to make gross generalizations, I do think women and men as audience members will respond to this play differently. Even in terms of who are my target audience members, my target journalists. When I had to send my press release, when I had a choice of a female-sounding name and a male-sounding name working at the same magazine or institution, I chose the female name, because I think that women are more interested in the topic of Me Too, and also when they see the play, they’re going to see themselves in the play. I hope men see themselves in the play as well, but it’s going to be a different kind of seeing themselves. I think for women it might be more of a relief and for men more challenging.
I assume you would call this a feminist piece of theatre.
JW: I would call it a feminist piece, and I don’t shy away from it. I don’t want people to get the impression that I’m trying to be neutral in this play, or that I’m trying to say that one Internet echo chamber is as bad as the other. I do think as a feminist, my Facebook feed, for example, is a little bit too filled with people who agree with me. I do think that you should stretch yourself, and you should try to form relationships, even superficial ones, with people who don’t think the same as you. But I’m tired of people pretending to be neutral, so I don’t want to give that impression. I want people to know what they’re walking into.
You mentioned that you think women will see themselves, especially in the character of Kelly. What do you want the audience to actually take away when seeing this play?
JW: I would like the audience to think about their relationship with the Internet, the way they use the Internet; to think about their relationships in general, their friendships and their intimate relationships and even their relationships with their family members; and to think about the times in which they are just humouring other people versus the times in which they are challenging other people. I think that the character of Kelly is having a feminist awakening, and she is starting to challenge comments that she might have just let go of, and there are consequences for that. I think that a lot of people don’t know that there are Red Pill-ers out there, that there are men’s rights activists out there. They don’t know that it’s a real thing, or maybe they think that it’s funny. I don’t think that they know that this is serious. I want people to take the Red Pill movement seriously as a threat. This play doesn’t get into the links between the Red Pill men’s rights activists and white supremacy, but there are real links, it is scary, and I think that people should go home and Google that shit. It’s only amplifying. We’re living in a world that’s becoming more and more polarized. The left and the right don’t speak to each other anymore, and again, this isn’t a play about how we should all just become centrists. That could be somebody else’s play, but that’s not my play. However, I do think that the threat is real. I didn’t make anything up in this play. Everything is based on real comments that I’ve read on the Internet or real conversations that I have either heard or been privy to second-hand. I’m not exaggerating anything, so if people weren’t aware that this is a thing, I want them to know that it is so they can be prepared, and maybe think about if they want to fight back and in what way.
Culver will be playing at Le P’tit Impro on St-Laurent as part of the St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival June 7-16. Tickets are $10 general admission and $8 for students, seniors, and QDF members. Buy tickets here and check out the Facebook event here.
Scripteditty 