Playwrights Horizons Stages World Premiere of Degenerates
- Playwrights Horizons is staging the world premiere of Else Went’s new play Degenerates, an intense exploration of online misogyny and the insular forums of the manosphere.
- At the heart of Degenerates is a five-person cast featuring a central dynamic between two characters whose bedrooms form the halves of Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set design.
- The production reunites the creative forces behind the previous play Initiative, pairing the writing of Else Went with the direction of Emma Rose Went.
Playwrights Horizons is staging the world premiere of Else Went’s new play Degenerates, an intense exploration of online misogyny and the insular forums of the manosphere. Directed by Emma Rose Went, the production officially opened in New York, bringing a deeply researched examination of radicalized internet subcultures to the stage.
Twelve years after Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen more in Isla Vista, California, while invoking an online moniker of involuntary celibacy, the language of the manosphere has moved from dark internet corners into mainstream awareness. Playwright Else Went spent years lurking on these forums to learn their obscure vocabulary, even providing a glossary in the lobby of Playwrights Horizons for audience members.
A Terrifying Duet on Stage
At the heart of Degenerates is a five-person cast featuring a central dynamic between two characters whose bedrooms form the halves of Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams’s set design. Zachary Desmond stars as Miller, an 18-year-old self-styled guru who pushes a nihilistic “black pill” ideology. Christopher Dylan White stars as Target, a young follower caught within the group’s web.
Miller’s character operates as a hardliner who believes he will never experience love or romance, forecasting his own suicide by age 30. Through voiceovers and interactions with other characters—including a new member named Serge, voiced by Juan Arturo, and Kemp, an affection-starved young man played by Tyler Nowell Felix—the play examines the psychological toll of these online spaces on vulnerable young men.
Production Background and Creative Team
The production reunites the creative forces behind the previous play Initiative, pairing the writing of Else Went with the direction of Emma Rose Went. The creative team has drawn praise for extracting raw, fearless performances from a relatively unheralded ensemble cast, anchoring heavy thematic material in gritty theatrical realism before pushing the staging toward the abstract.