In Conversation with Chris Patrick Hansen | BLACKPILL: REDUX
- TW
- Dec 28, 2025
- 6 min read
In our first Backstage Blog of 2026, we spoke to Chris Patrick Hansen, Artistic Director of Paracosm and creator of BLACKPILL: REDUX, a bold and total evolution of the smash hit BLACKPILL. which sold out the Explosives Factory and enjoyed widespread critical success in April 2025.
As online misogynistic hate communities continue to grow in reach and vitriol, their members are quietly refining methods to recruit and radicalise young boys with alarming precision. Shielded by anonymity and driven by opaque algorithms, these networks lie in wait, ready to intercept moments of doubt and insecurity.
Paracosm’s BLACKPILL: REDUX exposes the mechanisms through which these communities identify, isolate, and indoctrinate boys at their most vulnerable. Combining devised performance with archival text, the work charts the rapid descent from innocent questions like 'gym tips', 'how to be confident' or 'how do I talk to girls' into a vast and largely unseen digital underworld. BLACKPILL: REDUX reveals how fear is cultivated, how belonging is weaponised, and how a single click can draw a young mind into a culture of bitterness, blame, and radicalisation that operates in plain sight yet remains dangerously misunderstood.
Q: It's not all that often that a show returns to Theatre Works only 8 months after its first run. What led you to create BLACKPILL.? What has the journey been to get to this point?
We're thrilled to be back! BLACKPILL. started as an idea several years ago, when I got onto a binge of listening to media about deradicalising the Manosphere (the largely online subculture of embittered and misled men who attribute blame for the problems they face to a gynocentric society). I came to see two major problems in unpacking the incel (we'll get to incels in a second) wormhole and what leads men down it.
The first - many people can identify and rattle off the most mainstream voices of the incel communities. I needn't give them more platform here but you know who they are. While these are important voices to denounce and interrogate, they are only at the charismatic frontmen at the gateway of a much deeper, more disturbing subculture. Several people in the incel community have actually denounced the popular mainstream voices of misogyny, as their function is to draw impressionable ears in to be recruited. The fall goes deeper.
The second - It's my belief that any attempt to deradicalise someone without first trying to understand the world that they believe they're in is a non-starter. Like most radical groups, one of the first things done in the incel community is discrediting outside voices. "They reject us", "They are brainwashed, we are sane", "We don't fit into the world they force upon us". BLACKPILL. is not a show that asks for sympathy, grace or forgiveness for incels. It's not a show that platforms their voices, or tries to get you to 'see where they're coming from'. What it does assert is that trying to change someones radical worldview by means of judgement is ineffective, and that only through having a holistic understanding of the misogynistic voices leaking into the ears of young boys can we properly dismantle the lie that they weave.
So we opened at Explosives Factory in 2025 - we broke records, sold out our season, expanded the capacity 3 times (Those seats got pretty packed in by the final 2 nights!) and we were graced with very kind words from reviewers, which you can check out on our Theatre Works show page. Fairly quickly, we opened discussions with Theatre Works about what a second season of BLACKPILL. could look like, and within a few months of planning cast were retained, rehearsal dates were booked, and BLACKPILL. was coming back bigger and better than before.
Q: For those who didn't see BLACKPILL. in April, what can you tell them about the show?
Right - yes! Incels! If you haven't seen Adolesence (first, go watch it, but if you haven't!) An Incel is an involuntary celibate - a virgin not by choice. But that name is a bit of a mislead. The incel subculture, formerly housed on Reddit and 4chan before being booted onto their own privately hosted site, is a group of disaffected men who have woven a deep, nihilistic narrative of a world that hates men - where hypergamous women use social politics to assert their power, and men who are not 'Chads' (fit into traditional/outdated ideas of masculinity and attractiveness) are discarded to the wayside. Most members of this online community are there to make gross jokes, wallow in self-pity and further actualise their insecurity-based worldview (in incel terms, they are 'redpilled') .
But deeper in this community, there's subscribers to the Black Pill, a much more nihilistic and violent view that the world has played a sick joke on them, and that their only paths forward are self-annihilation or violent uprising. This group of users is small, but growing, and they started on the same pipeline as the redpillers. They call misogynistic terrorists 'saints', justifying their violent acts as retribution, and often fantasising about engaging in such acts themselves. Several certified violent attackers have been active on the incel forums, and this is a problem growing both worldwide and in Australia specifically.
So - BLACKPILL: REDUX is an investigation into the subculture of incels, into the indoctrinated worldview they offer, how it appeals to young, insecure and vulnerable minds, and what we need to understand, collectively, about leading young boys away from the ledge of the Manosphere.
Q: How much has changed between BLACKPILL. and BLACKPILL: REDUX? What can audiences who came to BLACKPILL. in its first life expect to see change this time?
Expect something totally different. We are no longer 10 performers crammed onto an EF stage that shrinks every night with the addition of more seats. The cast is bigger, the script is longer and the show totally revitalised, the set (indie artists please snap up set designer Josh McNeill for your projects before the commercial sector steals him from us) is expansive and spectacular, and the show is more ambitious, large-scale, and daring than before. If BLACKPILL. had it's packed-in underground blink-and-you'll miss it debut in April at Explosives Factory, think of BLACKPILL: REDUX as the next evolution of the show, given the space and resources to stretch into the size we always dreamed it could be. There's a million new things about the show that I can't wait for return audiences to experience (Though, I should rip this band-aid off now, there's no tap dancing this time around).
Q: What will surprise audiences about this work?
From what people have told me, the surprise is often that it's not all that angsty or nihilistic itself. This is probably down to a lot of the marketing we do, but the show has a fair bit of humour in it, mostly as a way for both our audience and majority-femme cast to engage with some of the more upsetting themes of the show, but also to highlight that 'dark humour' is one of the most effective guises incel radicalisers wrap their content in to tug at the insecurity threads of young boys. In a lot of ways, the show feels at times feels like a scroll through TikTok, because that's where most young men begin to interact with the dangerous ideas in the black pill ideology. There's song, there's dance, this is still a show in the 'show business' sense, but beneath it all is a story of how accepting an implied misogyny in any online content can allow a thread to unspool further and further. One of our very kind reviews said of the show's last rendition; "BLACKPILL. is a highly accomplished show in all areas. Most impressive is its ability to depict something troubling, indeed frightening, and to be entertaining at the same time." (Stage Whispers)
Q: What has been the most memorable moment of the process so far?
While a lot of the cast of BLACKPILL. are returning for BLACKPILL: REDUX, we've had the exciting opportunity to invite four more performers into our community. Seeing them integrate into the show, bring totally new voices and perspectives to the script, interrogate decisions made in the first production and find new rhythms and beats that I never knew were there before (in my own script!) has been an unreal experience in the strength of a diverse group of creative voices. In ten years of devising and realising theatre with some unbelievable collaborators - this is the most talented team of people I've ever assembled. Full stop. Come for them, and stay, I hope, because the show will invite you to interrogate the depths of a pit you may have, sadly, underestimated.
And to end on a silly note - also when the cast donned their incel masks for the first time. Hilarious. If you've seen them, you get it. If you haven't, you'll see.
BLACKPILL: REDUX plays January 7-17 at Theatre Works, opening our 2026 season.