Lecture Performance | 10 Treffen: Responsibility Treffen

Cyber Elf

By and with Magda Szpecht

Co-produced by SIRENOS Festival, Vilnius, Nowy Teatr, Warszawa and ÆFEKT, Warszawa

World premiere 1 September 2022 (Nowy Teatr x Generation After, Warszawa)

A woman with elf ears sits with her back to the camera at a desk with two screens. Around her are plants and lots of technology.

Cyber Elf © Maurycy Stankiewicz

This lecture performance is the result of the daily work of Magda Szpecht who chose the challenging path of a Cyber Elf, leaving her profession as a theatre director behind after the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine. Together with anonymous digital soldiers, she fights against Russian propaganda and trolls for the right to the truth.

This event is part of the Responsibility Treffen.

Magda is part of a virtual army of elves, where anonymous soldiers battle Russian trolls and propaganda for real information about what is going on through an endless stream of fake news. From the materials Magda collects during this digital war, she has created a performance lecture. We have all seen images from the Mariupol theatre, a symbol of Russian aggression, a devastating example of ongoing war against the Ukrainian people. Theatre as a shelter, bombed and destroyed, despite clear warnings about civilians and children hiding inside. Theatre was dragged into the middle of the conflict – literally and metaphorically.
But what can theatre do to help Ukraine?

After the full-scale war started in Ukraine on 24 February 2022, Magda Szpecht decided to get back to the profession that she was originally trained in — journalism. Abandoning her occupation as a theatre director, she chose her way as a Cyber Elf. Fighting Russian trolls, sharing checked information, fighting fake news. Switching her clock to long nights in front of the computer, floating between media channels, online newspapers, Telegram, Instagram, YouTube, Facebook and other battlefields of modern conflict. She is on the frontlines of cyber war and the stake is truly high: nothing less than our right to the truth.

“I have this feeling that the theatre lost the confrontation with reality. It’s an entertainment for peaceful times. It’s reserved for elites. When I make a theatre performance, approximately sixty people a month will watch it and they always have to pay. My stories on Instagram (@magdaszpecht) are being watched by at least 1000 people and I can share my thoughts with them for free. I have this feeling that I’m stepping outside of the art world and thanks to that I can reach more people on a more democratic level. Of course – because of algorithms – it’s not always the case, but there’s still much more feedback and frequency of communication with the audience than I could achieve with theatre.” – Magda Szpecht

Cyber Elves are:

an international group of hackers and activists, started in the Baltic countries region some time ago;
fighting with internet trolls;
fighting against fake news and disinformation;
open-source intelligence agents;
taking care of our social media daily feed;
helping Ukraine to win this war with solid information;
using technologies that are considered surveillance (e.g. satellite imagery, facial recognition) to help civilians in finding perpetrators of war crimes;
helping to collect and verify every kind of record from the Ukrainian people that might help in bringing Russian soldiers to justice in the future.

Artistic Team

Magda Szpecht – Text, Performance
Olga Drygas – Dramaturgical Consultation
Natan Berkowicz & DZIKI – Video
Krzysztof Kalicki – Live Music
Michał Rogulski (ÆFEKT) – Curator, Producer

Co-produced by SIRENOS Festival, Vilnius, Nowy Teatr, Warszawa and ÆFEKT, Warszawa.
Special thanks to Olga Drygas (Nowy Teatr) and Kristė Savickienė (SIRENOS Festival).The Berlin performances are taking place in co-operation with Weimar Kultursymposium and are funded by the Goethe-Institut.

The event is funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education/bpb.