Tackling cancel culture on the stage.

This controversial issue is the subject of a play that Henrique Santsper, playwright and director, brought to stage at the Toronto Fringe Festival.

The use of social media – combined with today’s political landscape – has led to a rise in people getting cancelled.

Thanks to recent generation’s obsessive use of platforms like Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and others, people are easily able to hop online and besmirch anyone with whom they don’t agree.

While many targeted by campaigns like this are cancelled for reasons which can be argued as noble, there are instances as well where people are given the boot simply because their opinions “offend” a radical group.

These themes and more are the subject of Cancelled, which ran from July 4 to 14 at the festival.

Attendees took in the story of Chad, a protagonist and an antagonist at the same time. He is on trial on social media and is being accused of robbery, assault and inflicting grievous bodily harm.

But is that all the truth?

“We don’t actually ever have the two sides of any story. Even if I am in the room with the same person and we are telling the same story. We are going to tell that from different lenses and from different beliefs and from different experiences,” said Santsper.

In fact, what has inspired Santsper to write the play is the true story of a social media user who was falsely accused of having relationships with minors. He ended his life on a TikTok live stream.

The fact is that on social media, voices are sometimes amplified and heard beyond what they actually mean. Truth is easily lost or distorted. The boundary between imagination and reality is smudged. There are many influential people who are present on social media under false identities.

In such circumstances, everyone is more or less a victim, even if they believe that they have somehow rid themselves of this impossible chaos.

But is there a way out?

“Why are we still canceling each other? Why can’t I just learn from those mistakes and move on? people are just so quick to jump in and be vile with their comments. So, I think [ we need to have] a little bit of compassion. It doesn’t even have to be love because love and patience, that would be a lot, but a little bit of compassion and tolerance from everybody towards everybody,” Santsper added.

For more information, you can visit the official page of Cancelled.