Degenerates tickets

By: Else Went
Director: Emma Rosa Went
Producer: Playwrights Horizons
Cast list: Juan Arturo (as Serge/Chad), Olivia Rose Barresi (as Stacy), Zachary W. Desmond (as Miller), Tyler Nowell Felix (as Kemp), and Christopher Dylan White (as Target)
Sets: Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams
Costumes: Kindall Houston Almond
Lighting: Jiyoun Chang
Sound: Angela Baughman
Other info: Video and projection design by S. Katy Tucker, dramaturgy by Sarah Lunnie, intimacy direction by Willow Funkhouser

As in their hit play Initiative, playwright Else and director Emma Rosa Went — creative partners and spouses — have worked for years with actors to dig into Degenerates’ singular characters.

“The actors have been affiliated with the play for a long time; if the chemistry is right, we love to go on a long walk with the same actors and allow them to go deep and really claim an ownership over their roles,” Emma Rosa Went said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Else Went commented on the play's look at isolation: “The siloing of the individual is the major project of American capitalism right now," she shared in a statement. "The formation of communities like this is a natural reaction to that sense of dislocation: that lack of community elsewhere, and that lack of personal sense of value. The force driving the internet is the manufacture and amplification of rage and discontent."

What to watch for

• The cast includes up-and-coming talent: Juan Arturo, Olivia Rose Barresi, Zachary W. Desmond, Tyler Nowell Felix, and Christopher Dylan White.
• "Written by Else Went with enormous heart and a mighty sharp pencil, Degenerates is an unexpected salve for our aching times," Playwrights Artistic Director Adam Greenfield said in a statement.
• The play employs a slew of internet lingo — from incel to weeb — but no prior knowledge is needed to understand this story about desire and isolation.
• Playwrights Horizons is known for staging bold new plays and musicals, as with Dance Nation, A Strange Loop, Heroes of the Fourth Turning, and others.