Original French title: Trois jours dans la vie de Vitaly Laïzenco. Genre: Thriller / black comedy. Cast: 7 characters (5 M / 2 F). Estimated running time: 2 hr 40, no intermission. Set: One location only (Vitaly Laïzenco’s office). No major technical complexity.
The lie... to the point of suffocation
Inside the ultra-secure premises of a state influence agency, Vitaly Laïzenco has 72 hours to unmask the traitor within his team. Welcome to the sealed world of a “troll factory” on the verge of implosion. In this cyberwar closed room, the dramatic thriller takes shape around the terrifying banality of Vitaly and his small team of hackers’ work: mass-producing fake news on a global scale. The play exposes the routine of those who manufacture, spread and calmly intensify doubt, day after day, throughout our democracies.
I set out to break down, with precision, the manipulation techniques used by these professionals of disinformation. By exposing on stage the mechanisms of social engineering and algorithmic manipulation in detail, the play seeks to “arm” its audience. Behind the suspense and the humor, theatre becomes a place of initiation and decoding, enabling citizens to defend themselves by better identifying the manipulations they are subjected to daily online.