Clicks and democracy: do our opinions really matter?

Graphic: Park Theatre

Daniel Nelson

Elon Musk making himself First Buddy to President Trump and Mark Zuckerberg’s 180-degree policy turn on fact-checking and moderation make Antigone [on strike] highly topical.

The audience for the new play at the Park Theatre is invited to vote at various points in the drama, which “looks at the effect of behaviour-predicting technologies on freedom of choice and democracy”.

“Public opinion plays a crucial part as audiences participate and are faced with choices,” says writer/director Alexander Raptotasios. “What shapes our opinion? A public debate, cold facts or an Instagram ad?”

And that brings in online ‘echo chambers’ and the control of social media platforms where “provocations, antagonism and fights generate clicks and money.”

The drama is doubly topical because it is set in motion by a hunger strike and consequent media frenzy over how the Home Secretary will deal with Esmeh, who ran away from her East London home at the age of 14 to join Islamic State in Syria and who now is stranded in a refugee camp with her citizenship cancelled by the Home Secretary.

Sounds familiar? Raptotasios is insistent that this is not documentary theatre.

“We didn’t want to re-enact on stage the story of an ISIS bride. You never see her on stage,” he explains. Esmeh’s experience is the backstory, and the play deals with how society wants to deal with such issues: “What if someone tried to bring her back by starting a hunger strike, a media war, a PR strategy? That’s the story of the play.

“Why did the Home Secretary a few years ago take these decisions? Public opinion, you might say: OK, then let the audience play public opinion, let them vote, let their votes affect the play and take it in different directions every time. That was the idea.”

The play, in other words, is not the IS brides story, but how the public  consumes the story — through “500 different ways and platforms, with less and less fact-checking, less and less reliability, no certainty about who’s a real person: no-one checks the stories. 

“But democracy is based on the concept of educated citizenship, about how to make a vote. So if you take away that education because no-one can tell what’s true or not any more, should they be allowed to vote?”

The audience feedback idea was developed through workshops and at schools in East London, particularly Oaklands school in London’s Bethnal Green area.

Before Raptotasios dashes back to rehearsals of the four-character, 90-minute drama, he muses: “The question is, do our opinions matter, really, today?”

Well, do they?

“It depends. We get the illusion that they may matter. It’s always a minefield, a battleground, to figure out what’s real, what matters, what doesn’t.”

Antigone [on strike], £9.50-£25, is at the Park Theatre, Clifton Terrace, N4 3JP until 22 February. Info: Park