Guest Blog: 'Theatre and Conspiracy Theory Have Much in Common': Writer Jessica Norman on Her Debut Play, THIS LITTLE EARTH

When I was researching This Little Earth, I stumbled across an essay by social psychologist Serge Moscovici, in which he likens ‘the conspiracy mentality’ (the belief in conspiracy theory) to theatrical performance.

He argues that theatre is made up of dualities: onstage, an actor is both the person they are in reality and the role that they are playing, while a prop like a chair might take on all manner of meanings, transforming into something else entirely. Audiences accept this: it is a fundamental part of the contract of coming to see a play. As Moscovici puts it, in the theatre, as in the conspiracy mentality, things ‘can show themselves in one shape or form and simultaneously appear in the opposite shape [...] They are in reality what they do not seem to be.’

This idea – that theatre and conspiracy theory have much in common – resonated with me early in the writing process and made me see that my story, about two Flat-Earthers who go to Antarctica to find the edge of the world, could only be written as a play.

For me, theatre is itself a kind of conspiracy theory: a place where we make the impossible possible. Onstage, a story becomes true only when an audience believes it. “Conspiracy thinking” exists on a spectrum; we all engage in it to some degree, and it can even be useful for our survival. In This Little Earth, my creative team and I are actively tapping into audiences' conspiracy thinking brains when we ask them to believe in Honey and Christopher’s journey.

Our production uses the realities of theatre – the physical presence of an audience, actors pretending to be people they are not – to make a bigger point about conspiracy belief. But it also capitalises on the power of theatre to create empathy like no other storytelling medium. At a time of growing intolerance, we want to encourage audiences to understand Honey and Christopher and to love them as much as we do, in spite of what they believe.

Flat-Earth is an extreme manifestation of our post-truth landscape. We are living at a time where we have more information at our fingertips than ever before, yet it is becoming increasingly hard to distinguish truth from fiction. The world is chaotic, vastly unequal and out of our control so it is understandable that people turn to simple stories to make sense of it.

But This Little Earth does not let Honey and Christopher off the hook. There are real-world consequences to their beliefs – after all, if you believe in nothing, you’ll believe in anything. It is no coincidence that a few powerful people are stoking belief in conspiracy theories to sow unrest, hatred and discord. The irony is that most conspiracies cast minorities as bad actors (Jewish people, immigrants, Muslims) rather than holding the real powers to account. You only have to look at the recent Far-Right marches to see the danger that conspiracy theories are doing in our society today.

I’m not going to pretend that my play about Flat-Earthers has the answers. But I do believe that building community is a powerful thing. Watching a story with a group of strangers, feeling empathy for people different from ourselves and focusing on our shared humanity is one way of doing that; of combating the isolation that breeds these beliefs.

That’s, I think, where theatre and conspiracy theories are different. Theatre is about bringing people together, rather than dividing them. A good play acknowledges how messy and complicated the truth is, even as it tries to get us closer to understanding it. And when a play ends, we clap the actors, acknowledging that what we witnessed was nothing more than a fiction.

This Little Earth is at the Arcola Theatre from 22 October – 15 November

Main Photo Credit: Johan Perrson