Credit: BGT
The Berliner Grundtheater (BGT) has announced an upcoming play The Good Guy?, by Ferelith Kingston, set to be performed from Friday 4 to Sunday 6 October 2024 at 19:30, at the Abbaye de Neumünster (neimënster).
The play won the “Special Mention by the Jury” Prize at the Prix Laurent 2023. The Good Guy? explores the impact that enforced gender norms have on young people growing up in the digital age. Online extremism, particularly extreme misogyny, has been normalised to the extent that, for many young adults and teenagers, it has become an invisible background noise. The result was a rise in online communities like "incels" (involuntary celibates) and the popularity of figures such as Andrew Tate and Jordan Peterson. The Good Guy? examines what the real-world impact of this pervasive online rhetoric is, through two voices.
Dylan (Alessandro Stasi) and Katie (Natacha Seventin) are two 20-somethings whose stories are separate but mirror each other.
Dylan, lonely and socially awkward, gets company from the online society around a popular video game. He is led to believe he has found a support group and even friends. But, in reality, he is getting sucked into an almost cult-like belief that women are the root of all his problems.
Katie doesn’t get why feminism “had to be such a big deal”. She discovers “pop feminism” at a TEDTALK and starts to feel that she has a community around her, but as she learns about the reality of extreme misogyny and incel sub-culture she increasingly anxious, fearful and frustrated by the apathy shown by her friends and family.
Their stories unfold in a blend of sometimes comic, sometimes tragic scenes and monologues. As the play develops the two stories become more heavily intertwined building towards a potentially explosive climax.
According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, an incel is a “person (usually a man) who regards himself or herself as being involuntarily celibate and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility toward those who are sexually active."
Tickets cost €20, €12 for students and will become available on www.neimenster.lu from mid-June 2024.
