Interview : Clare Duffy of Civic Digital on new play Many Good Men and Online Radicalisation of Masculinity

Many Good Men employs the form of interactive Forum Theatre. Originated in Brazil, it performs short texts about contentious topics which are then paused before asking the audience to suggest changes or even get involved in acting those changes onstage.

Here, local young people, from Dunfermline, have co-authored the story of a young footballer drawn into online radicalisation to explore and challenge ideas around masculinity. We got a chance to catch up with Clare Duffy, the Artistic Director of Civic Digital, the company behind the project, to find out more about it and the unusual method used to research. I sat warmly at home, and Clare shivered in the stands at East End Park, home of Dunfermline Athletic and venue for Many Good Men.

Many Good Men had an interesting beginning. Can you describe how it began?

The question was how to get a girlfriend. I set up an account as a young man called Clive – minimum amount of data: age, gender – and then put the question ‘how to get a girlfriend’ into YouTube. That was a very early part of the research to see what the algorithm gave me.

Very quickly you start off with motivational content about being healthy, then it progresses to being the best, a hero, strong, never having any emotions, not showing your emotions. Then, quickly, talking about red pill and black pill content, and ultimately incel content.

I became really interested in that process for somebody who’s just legitimately thinking, ‘could I be a bit more attractive to attract a partner?’, and how quickly the algorithm will try to drag you into a rabbit hole of misogyny and gender-based violence.

Where did the idea originally come from?

Out of being contacted by various groups like COSLA and Women’s Project, and White Ribbon. They were seeing a lot of women joining the sex industry online during COVID and wanted to know if Civic Digits could put together a project for young women about being safe.

Through conversations with those organisations, we were like, why do we need to teach women how to be safe? Why aren’t we looking at the perpetrators and why is there gender-based violence, not just to sex workers, but for lots of people in lots of different walks of life. So that’s where it started.

The project has drawn in local people who co-create the show?

It’s a participatory project. I’ve been working with pupils at Dunfermline High to write this version, and this was always going to be in partnership with Dunfermline FC. 

We did an introductory workshop with Dunfermline High School with the whole of the S2s – all of the 13 and 14 year olds. 250 of them! Then we had a small group who self-selected to be the co-writers of the show, but the whole of S2 are going to come and see it. 

When I was doing early stages research, we worked with a group in Glasgow. I did a workshop with them trying to explore what they think it means to be a man and where do they get that idea from? That group was 100% football. Football is everything about teamwork, respect, taking care of each other, pride winning – loads of really positive, brilliant things; but unfortunately, lots of not so brilliant things which are talked about a bit more now than they used to be.

What is the significance of the name of the project?

The project is called Many Good Men for a very good reason. We believe that the vast majority of men in our society want everybody to have equal rights, happiness, health and to live a great life. There’s a minority of men who use gender as a way of compensating for other insecurities that haven’t had a chance to be healed. 

The point of this show is to try and look at all of us who are so hurt so we don’t need to blame women or people of different coloured skin or different cultural backgrounds or whatever. If all of us who don’t agree with that were more vocal and supportive of those who do feel hurt and aren’t getting the space to heal then we could really make a difference. We need to acknowledge that there’s a problem and then agree that we all want to do something about it.

You use Forum Theatre, a well-established technique of getting the audience involved in the storytelling.

Yes. The audience starts in the Purvis Suite [a hospitality suite at East End Park] with a news report of an incel attack, and then the audience come through to underneath the seats where we’ve got a very interactive digital performance. 

We follow two football players who witnessed the attack. They’re outraged to start off with and then start to research content online. One of them starts to become more depressed because of that content and ends up being an incel identifying person, and the other one becomes radicalized, starts getting involved in right-wing organizations. Then we say [to the audience], does everybody think that this is a real problem?

And that’s where the audience gets involved?

Then we go back to the Purvis Suite and say okay if you could think of a different person that could come into these lives or something else that could happen, what would it be? Then we try it out. I love Forum Theatre because, as Augusto Boal (the creator of Forum) said, it’s a rehearsal for life.

And that allows people to explore issues safely?

You create a space where the consequences of your actions don’t count because it’s a rehearsal. You can try it out. You can say, what if we saw the mother trying to talk to the son? Or what if the coach actually changed the culture of this football club and made it mandatory for everybody to have counselling? Everybody gets the opportunity to try out their idea. 

We don’t expect to solve many thousands of years of misogyny, we want to open up the question and unpack it and try and understand how complex it is and what the structural issues are. How does history impact on us, how does the structure of the way that the internet is designed impact on us, and what can we do about it? Can we use democracy? Can we use the legal system? Can we use community action?

And you hope those conversations shall keep going?

It’s a start, turning to the person on your left and your right and saying, what do you think about this? I’m scared. This scares me. Can you help me? If there was one message out of all of this, asking for help is such a complex and difficult thing for so many of us.

The legacy that you want to leave is that people have something that’s outside of their head that is practical, but also emotionally engaged with: something that they can carry into another conversation with somebody else. It will be fascinating to see over the years if that actually does shift anything and we’ll be keeping in contact with Dunfermline High.

Now, the future of Many Good Men – what does that look like?

We want to do a tour of this across the whole of Scotland. Funding it is a challenge. Civic Digits is funded by Creative Scotland, but there’s no way that Creative Scotland can give us enough money. But the money must be out there somewhere. That’s my belief. We’re gathering evidence all the time about the positive impact that this can have. 

The thing theatre brings to the table in these really difficult conversations about masculinity and violence is that the fictional world of the play gives safety to everybody. Sometimes if you try to have a conversation with somebody who’s already a fan of a misogynistic influencer, they’re never going to listen to you, because they’re already down that path. 

Many Good Men is at Dunfermline Athletic’s East End Park on 2^nd April and 3^rd April 2026

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/many-good-men-tickets-1982348501732