When I’m grappling with existential questions, I tend to write my way out. Some years ago, as elections revealed the depth of ideological polarization in our society and as new hate groups began to emerge from the woodwork, I found myself reconsidering the idea that compassion and diplomacy, virtues I’d held to
Alica Abracen, Playwright of What Rough Beast
be sacred, were the answer to the rising tides of white supremacy and far-right extremism.
I grappled with the idea that empathy might be an act of dangerous moral compromise; that fostering dialogue across division, something I’d always considered to be a long-term goal of my work in theatre, might be antithetical to social justice. I felt the news cycle chipping away at my pillars of virtue until those pedestals began to give way beneath me. In that free-fall I wrote What Rough Beast.
What Rough Beast was my first-ever theatre experience! I know it’s late to go to a theatre at the age of 26… but as the saying goes better late than never. Before going to the theatre I had mixed feelings—as one always does when one doesn’t know what to expect—but was incredibly glad that I did!
I was curious about this play—when I read its description—since it touches on a problem that I care a lot about and is often difficult to address. It’s about the opinions we form of others—to be more specific people that look different from us— and how we express ourselves on the internet when we talk about it.
Do we say what we have in our minds openly? Let’s say I have in mind the idea that “Brown people are noisy and unclean”. (I am giving the example of brown people because I identify as one). And my neighborhood which is Park-Extension happens to be the brownest neighborhood in Montreal and also happens to be one of the dirtiest neighborhoods in the city.
What would be the implication if I tweet or post about this so-called “brown” phenomenon that brown people are making out cities dirtier? And that increased immigration of these people is part of the problem? I could point to this and easily make a story that somehow then immigration (at least not all immigration) is not positively contributing to our society.
I am just a hater
Maybe the implication could be that I am just a hater. Or that someone needs to speak about the problem… others are afraid that they would hurt people’s feelings and that the problem persists at the expense of others (other people in the neighborhood have to live in the dirt too; if they’re OK with that who am I to blame?) …so the savior here would be me.
The problem here is that I might be very honest about solving an issue or helping out supposedly my people—people in my neighborhood as in the above example—yet how can I be sure I am actually helping? That I am on the right side of morality?
That’s what What Rough Beast portrays. In a scene, the younger brother in the family keeps pointing out that no one’s doing anything about the fact that being white is criminalized—all acting gigs are going to minorities—and that Muslims actually have zero empathy for us.
The problem with freedom: Crossing the line of freedom
At the student school council, there’s a group debating on whether they should invite a controversial professor for a public speech. Ironically this event is to be organized with the help of the Muslim Student Center for a professor who is clearly anti-immigrant and particularly Islamophobic.
One side of the debate is that we need to hear opinions different from ours to actually understand what the other side has to say. By listening to opinions different from ours we have the possibility to improve our opinions wherever they fall short. And on the other side, the debate is that in providing this freedom to the various kinds of “hate-mongers” of the world we’re doing nothing but laying out the red carpet to hatred and division in our society by proliferating their voice. By doing so, instead of helping our society grow constructively, we would be actively participating in dividing it.
While this is not an uncommon problem albeit a modern one, its solution is not new either. Freedom was never meant to be unwarranted and it could never be so.
If freedom can be unlimited that would be at the misfortune of others’ freedom. Think of the freedom of walking anywhere in the country versus the freedom to not have anyone uninvited in your backyard. If someone does walk into your backyard uninvited, he would be using his freedom at the expense of your freedom!
But when this line of freedom is questioned, that is when the chaotic disruption of a family and of society unfolds as portrayed in What Rough Beast. When we push our freedom to its zenith, sometimes the price could be that we lose our family, friends, and the virtues of our country.
When empathy is a curse
But the real moral dilemma of What Rough Beast was even stronger than just crossing the line of freedom.
In the author’s notes, Alica Abracen writes, “I grappled with the idea that empathy might be an act of dangerous moral compromise; that fostering dialogue across division … might be antithetical to social justice.“
What do you do when your virtue is used against you? That is one step beyond just the discussion on freedom.
We not only have to think of freedom now, where it lies and where it does not but also where our empathy lies. That is a hard pill to swallow for anybody. Even empathy cannot be entirely free! And that thought is provokingly difficult to process for empathetic people like Alice and which is what I imagine prompted her to write this play.
This play was performed so well on the 9th of March, 2023. I had great pleasure watching the spectacle. Where the actors brought to emotion the multiple struggles of our time—a time when even being simply a nice person is not so easy and being passive is a license to someone else’s monstrosity. What do you do with this dilemma? One, you watch a play. Another, you think for yourself how we can move forward from here.
