Neptune’s new Cult Play delves into sex, coercion, memory

What would it take for you to join a cult? What would it take for you to leave one? Neptune’s solo show Cult Play, explores these questions through flashback, reflection, and the power of the stage. 

The show debuted in Montreal in the fall of 2025. It is now set to run in Halifax, running Feb. 3-15.

The lead character, Alex, is a young actress who meets Taylor, a beautiful woman who entices her into a new community that is not what it seems. 

The play follows Alex’s attempts to process her “horrific” experience in real time. 

Madeleine Scovil, a recent graduate of The National Theatre School in Montreal, plays Alex. 

“She’s someone who is really caring and really giving, sometimes too much,” said Scovil of her character in an interview with The Signal. 

Scovil also describes Alex as “very insecure, closed off, and lonely, searching for community and purpose.”

Scout Rexe is the playwright. She told The Signal that her inspiration came from a personal fascination with cults and what draws people in. 

Cult Play turns “the lens back on all the people who are watching cult content” with an aura of judgment or for reassurance that they would not fall for the allure of a cult. 

Cult Play incorporates multimedia elements, such as video, to convey the collision of Alex’s past and presence on stage.

Director Annie Valentina said that using video ties into the “nature of memory.”

“Part of it is in the way that we keep memorability,” said Valentina. “Especially in this day and age, that we have access to so much digital ways of recording things and the way that sometimes looking back at them from the hindsight of our present, things are sort of re-framed or you see different things in them.” 

“And part of the goal of Alex telling the story to the audience after the fact is to invite them to see both what it was like to be in her shoes in the moment, and also what it’s like to take some distance to it and look back,” said Valentina. 

Rexe said the play presents “the artifacts” of Alex’s time in the cult, through photos and videos. 

“Through the process of telling, it also becomes clear to her and us that she’s not actually as out of the cult as she thought she was,” said Rexe.

The play also dives into sexual themes of dominance and submission, explored through kink and shibari — an art form which focuses on tying a person with rope for esthetic purposes. 

Rexe said the sexual elements represent the seductive nature of cults and coercive control in relationships. 

“The scenes around submission and dominance are relevant to Alex’s exploration of power, gender, and queer identity alongside abusive power and coercion,” said Rexe. 

Valentina said the audience’s role is also significant in Alex’s recovery. 

“In that way, we are in a performance, so the world of theatre is, in fact, the theatre,” said Valentina.

“For Alex, because she is an actor, (the audience) is also a community that she can feel at home in and that she can explore some of these bigger questions in real time,” said Valentina.

“Our main character, Alex, really needs the audience to tell her story,” said Rexe. 

“She needs their feedback, she needs them to witness what she has experienced because she’s trying to make sense of it all.”

Valentina said audience participation is not required, but it is encouraged as an opportunity to engage directly with the story.