Else and Emma Rosa Went's Incel Drama 'Degenerates' Opens Off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons

Else and Emma Rosa Went's new play 'Degenerates' is running at Playwrights Horizons in New York through October 18. The married playwright-director duo's follow-up to 'Initiative'—a five-hour epic that won a Lucille Lortel Award for best ensemble and was named among the best plays of 2025—focuses on members of a Discord channel who discuss their involuntary celibacy. The production features a two-and-a-half-minute scene-within-a-scene set to SOPHIE's 2015 track 'MSMSMSM,' depicting a sexual encounter in a bedroom filled with plush toys and anime posters, performed before an audience of 140. Else, who is trans, was inspired by online spaces during the pandemic where young trans people struggled with gender dysphoria and suicidality, and by the linguistic and psychological overlap between incel communities and trans users on 4chan. The play examines masculine toxicity, desire, and the consequences of abandoning men to antisocial hatred. In an interview, Else said the work aims to make audiences feel what they usually turn away from, while Emma Rosa noted that theater's power lies in bodies and proximity. The cast includes Zachary Desmond, Christopher Dylan White, Tyler Nowell Felix, and Olivia Rose Barresi. Else stated that trans women are the audience who most need to see the play, and Emma Rosa described it as fundamentally a trans coming-out story. The conversation also touched on Mary Oliver's poem about loneliness and being unbroken.