The Believers are but Brothers

In partnership with Melbourne Knowledge Week, Arts House presents The Believers are but Brothers. Its recipe for the end of the world is simple: take men, politics and the internet, then stir gently. In an age where toxic masculinity touted by certain recently elected leaders reigns, the show looks at the role social media plays. Milk Bar was fortunate to speak to the creative mind behind the dizzying and phenomenal show.

For Milk Bar readers, tell us a little about yourself. 

My name’s Javaad Alipoor. I’m a director, writer, artist and sometimes journalist from Bradford in Northern England.

How did you come to be an activist?

I’m a little bit uncomfortable with the word activist. I think of myself as someone who is interested in politics. It’s in my work, both in my discursive writing and the things I write and direct for stage and screen. Part of this interest plays out as wanting to be actively involved, and helping to shape how the world is. I often say that’s good for political artists, otherwise their work can be a bit didactic! I come from a very political family so being politically active has never felt weird or foreign to me. I think my first real practical bits of campaigning were around the alter-globalisation movement; and like many of my generation I was galvanised by the struggle against the Iraq War, with some friends I helped lead the school students’ strike against the war in Yorkshire.

Described as a “window into a frightening virtual world”, what can audience members expect to come across in the 55-minute show?

One thing I always say is that this is a piece of work that helps an audience feel connected to things they perhaps previously only thought about intellectualy; it helps us feel complicit and implicated in the mess of toxic masculinity, wired just out of centre websites and extremist political groups that we all see moving towards the mainstream. We do this through a big interactive element. We tell our audience to leave their phones on, and we have a live WhatsApp group where the boundary between the audience and the play start to blur. At the same time the show reflects some of the dark humour that got me through my research.  One story in particular, about failed wannabe jihadis who spend months playing around in swimming pools while the Syrian Civil War rages around them is one of my favourites.

Where does The Believers Are But Brothers fit into the landscape of Melbourne Knowledge Week? What messages do you hope to convey through the show?

As I say, I’m not really one for messages in my plays – I want the audience to feel immersed and stuck into a world and be arguing about the play later.  I suppose my vision of theatre really has an overlap with Melbourne Knowledge Week. Without making work that is didactic or tub-thumping, I think the reality is that the best theatre is a space for interrogation. It has to be entertaining, funny and emotionally driven, but at the same time it is the viewing place from which a society can see and know itself. Especially in the case of Believers, that’s something I think about a lot, it’s a piece of work that speaks to a lot of concerns about political extremism and social media, but it happens in a specific geographical place, with an audience and performers of specific flesh and blood.

How do you see the world in the next 30 years?

I think in the global north there is a bigger and bigger generational political divide.  Certainly in the UK and the US one sees a bigger and bigger divide between a younger, more diverse, socially liberal but poorer generation (less likely to own their own homes and so on) and an older, more small-town “baby boomer” generation.  In terms of climate change, the rise of the far right and other big global challenges, I just hope the voice of that younger generation, who are poorer and less likely to vote, comes through.

You can catch Javaad Alipoor’s The Believers are but Brothers this weekend.

The Believers are but Brothers
Till Saturday, 25 May 2019
North Melbourne Town Hall, 521 Queensberry Street, North Melbourne
artshouse.com.au/events/the-believers-are-but-brothers