Most social media surfers feel secure that Russian trolls exploit other people’s fears, phobias and foibles in order to manipulate opinion and divide a nation. Playwright Sarah Gancher’s latest play, “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy” suggests that if you don’t know on whom the trolls prey, they prey on you.
Gancher, along with co-directors Elizabeth Williamson and Jared Mezzocchi, describe “Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy,” as something akin to “The Office,” only the product sold is fiction rather than paper. The genuinely multimedia production debuts on Zoom Tuesday through Saturday, Oct. 20-24, at TheaterWorks Hartford.
“A lot of the genesis of the idea (came) from the realization that many accounts that I had followed during the 2016 election were Russian trolls,” said Gancher as she strolled through her Queens, N.Y. home on a misty Monday recently.
The play is set in 2016 St. Petersburg, Russia, specifically in the Internet Research Agency, a real operation where professional internet trolls tweet, type and TikTok their way into the hearts and minds of impressionable potential U.S. voters. Gancher focuses more on the workers’ task of creating characters with voices and stories from a country entirely foreign to them. Does their status as Fake Yanks doing Fake News shape and distort their perception of genuine truth?
“I became really interested in the subject of Russian interference partly because I used to live in Hungry and I watched that country slide into authoritarianism,” Gancher said.
While Gancher was born at night, it wasn’t last night. She smelled something fishy about several tweets scrolling through her laptop. She suspected herring and caviar.
“Somebody supposedly from Texas talking to someone in Tennessee,” Gancher said. “They’re not talking like anybody speaks that I’ve ever heard of. Usually, people butcher a tweet writing the way they speak,” she said.
“At first I thought it was some weird, new internet slang I didn’t know,” she said. “I’m thinking, why is this everywhere all of the sudden?”
Her interest in Russian politics and culture piqued the playwright’s curiosity about the individuals hired to create these fictional characters and their imaginary stories. In short, she’s exploring how these faceless people tell stories.
“It’s like my job,” she said of a troll’s work. “They’re playwrights.”
Gancher was off to the races. She devoured Kathleen Hall Jamieson’s poli-sci book “CyberWar,” Dale Beran’s “It Came From Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump Into Office” and “The Invention of Russia: The Rise of Putin and the Age of Fake News” by Arkady Ostrovsky, among countless articles.
Gancher, whose plays have been produced or developed at London’s National Theatre, The Public, New York Theater Workshop and regional theaters, struck up a conversation with Williamson, who recently served as associate artistic director/director of new play development for Hartford Stage, soon after Williamson staged Gancher’s play “Seder” at Hartford Stage in 2017.
Gancher explained her embryonic project to Williamson, and the director was eager to see the script. When both deemed it ready to leave her house, Gancher sent the script to TheaterWorks Hartford, where Williamson had dibs to direct this season.
TheaterWorks slated a workshop production of Gancher’s comedy last spring and cast the play. Then Covid-19 shutdown the production, the season and hopes of a production before the general election in November.
About this time, Mezzocchi, who designed the multimedia aspect of “Russian Troll Farm,” was winding up the spring semester at the University of Maryland in College Park and was itching to apply his media design skills on a play that wasn’t simply a flat Zooming of a stage play.
“My agents suggested I talk to Sarah about any scripts she has,” said Mezzocchi, who was already scheduled to travel with the playwright to Arkansas for a workshop of another one of Gancher’s plays.
“Jared called and said he had this technology that enabled him to expand the multimedia parameters for theater productions,” Gancher said. “Do you have any project suitable, he asked?
“Yes, in fact I do,” Gancher said, speaking for herself. “I have an entire play that takes place largely on the internet where whole, really exciting action sequences take place on Twitter.”
Mezzocchi, who designs on a theater software program called Isadora, said that “I read it and it’s like ‘Man, it’s talking about how the digital platform has been manipulating our culture!’”
Mezzocchi’s passion for “Russian Troll Farm” galvanized Gancher’s urgent craving to see her trolls on their feet before a live viewing audience.
Gancher switched plays to “Russian Trolls,” TheatreSquared in Arkansas read it and opened their gate for a workshop. TheaterWorks stepped in after that.
Next, Brooklyn-based theater company The Civilians climbed aboard to co-produce the production with TheatreSquared and TheaterWorks.
Theater groups traditionally initiate the rehearsal process simply, working only with the cast in a rehearsal space other than the stage with folding chairs, mock props and a floor plan taped out precisely to match the design. Mezzocchi said that the digital element so thoroughly dominates the production values that he, Williamson and Gancher had to begin with the technical design largely in place before introducing the actors Danielle Slavick, Mia Katigbak, Haskell King, Ian Lassiter and Greg Keller to the process.
“The entire rehearsal process has been inverted, building out the technical story-telling devices first, then jumping into storytelling with the actors,” said Mezzocchi. “We’re literally building a new form while simultaneously producing a new form. So it’s really thrilling.”
Gancher said that re-examining her script through projections opened her mind to use these visual tools to tell her story.
“Jared is a brilliant video projection designer who I’ve worked with before,” Gancher said. “I’m not a huge fan of video projections. Like I’m just skeptical about them, usually. Even when they’re done as well as Jared can do them.
“It’s turned out to be a real profit because we all work wonderfully together,” Gancher said. “I don’t think it could’ve worked with one director because it’s so complex and crazy. It would be too much for just one director.”
While one may assume that “Russian Troll Farm” is lefty agitprop theater or propaganda, Gancher said that is not even hand-grenade close to the truth.
“One thing I’m very proud of is not preaching to the choir,” the playwright said. “In this case, we’re all being manipulated. People on the left, people on the right. Everybody. I got involved because I was manipulated in small and subtle ways.”
Gancher, whose script is roughly three-quarters verbatim from Internet Research Agency transcripts, said that the characters are equal opportunity manipulators.
“Ginning up of anger and indignation on the left and the right,” she said of the trolls’ objective. “There’s definitely a conscious effort to radicalize people towards the right and the left.
“I think that right-wing people would like it.”
Come what may after “Russian Troll Farm” runs its course at TheaterWorks Hartford, Gancher is happy that her play has opened her eyes to a new way to make theater and tell her story.
As Mezzocchi gamely put it: “Let’s try and do the impossible because maybe we can.”
“Russian Troll Farm: A Workplace Comedy” will stream to a password-protected platform for five live performances. The schedule is Tuesday through Saturday, Oct. 20-24, at 7:30 p.m. For those unable to view a live performance, encore viewing is available during an on-demand window from Oct. 24-Nov.1.
Tickets for the show can be purchased online at RussianTrollFarm.com or by calling 860-527-7838. Members of TheaterWorks Hartford have tickets included as part of their 2020-2021 membership. Single stream passes are available for $20.20.
The Link LonkOctober 16, 2020 at 04:19AM
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'Russian Troll Farm': newfangled theater comedy about internet deception - CT Insider
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