At The Cultch until November 10, 2018
Tickets from $24 at 604-251-1363 or www.tickets.thecultch.com
Posted November 1, 2018
Who wants to go to the theatre and turn their cellphone on? Apparently, lots do and that’s what UK writer/performer/co-director Javaad Alipoor counts on in his 65-minute audience-interactive work, The Believers Are But Brothers.
I’m not one of those but, persuaded by a fellow critic to see if or how the show works sans phone, I checked it out. Not surprisingly, I felt excluded. And that’s how the subjects of this show feel; three marginalized young men who think they deserve – but are not getting – money, sex and power. I could always have turned my cellphone back on to feel included but what recourse do they have?
The show creates such sensory bombardment with monitors, video clips, projections, the sound of explosions and gunfire plus a TED-type lecture – all going on at the same time – that having my cellphone on and running WhatsApp plus taking notes would have been more than I could comfortably handle. Still, it was frustrating to hear ripples of laughter or snorts of derision as instant messages passed between performer and audience members, all bathed in telltale blue light.
Buried in all that tech, there is a story that comes and, frustratingly, goes: Atif and Marwan are just two of three million Muslims living in Britain. Angered by racism and lack of opportunity, they spend time on platforms like 4chat where ‘doctored’ images, fake news, hate-speak and violent images go unchallenged. Radicalized, they go to the Middle East to join ISIS. Middle-class American Ethan also gets sucked in and all that trash talk takes him over to the alt right. The point of all this is that the Internet provides a community for those who feel alienated. While that’s not a new thought, Alipoor presents it compellingly, often poetically.
The show begins with Alipoor seated with his back to us before a bank of monitors all running different images: war games, message boards, news clips, televised political rallies, photos, etcetera. But soon he swings around to address us directly; info and stats come faster than you can keep up with them. And, unless you’re up on Middle Eastern news, the names he drops don’t mean much.
Off the top he says The Believers Are But Brothers is about “men, politics and the Internet”. More specifically, it’s about the power of the Internet to spread hate and recruit young men to do the dirty work for extremists of all stripes. Like vultures, they wait for the vulnerable.
On the strength of Alipoor’s passion, persuasive performance and obvious intelligence, The Believers Are But Brothers, presented by the Cultch and Diwali in BC, is a fascinating but challenging dive into that dark world even if no solutions are forthcoming. As Alipoor says late in the show, “In the inky blackness of our screen lies a network of power greater than any tyrant has ever dreamed.” That’s enough to keep you awake at night.