“If you reach 20,000 likes I will do something amazing.”
This is what performance artist Louise Orwin promises the audience in “Famiengry”, an existential crisis set by Tiktok to be a fun in the digital age. Filed before a live crowd, it is transmitted directly to the application simultaneously.
At Wednesday’s show, Orwin performed tasks inspired by what he saw in Live Tiktok: eating in front of the camera, running on a routine, drinking from a stanley tumbler and performing tiktok jumps, all describing her career in the art of performance.
If Orwin’s fraud were evidenced by the audience beyond Soho Playhouse, where “Famiehungry” would appear until February 8 after the success of the Edinburgh Fringe festival, it was an open question this weekend after the app was banned in the United States for a while.
“The danger in terms of the practices of the show is not great, but the feeling of political danger about banning is really interesting for work as well,” Orwin said. “It’s a strange situation to be.”
Congress approved legislation last year to stop Tiktok if it was not sold to a government -approved buyer, citing concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to the sensitive data of users and manipulate the content in the app, which is owned of the Chinese company bytedance.
After the Supreme Court supported the law last week, Tiktok was dark shortly before returning to many users when future President Donald J. Trump showed support for the app. (After Trump’s inauguration on Monday, he signed an executive order that stopped stopping for 75 days.)
For many people, what was ultimately a break in the service became a joke. But the legal status of the app is turbulent and Orwin is one of the users who still have no access to the tick. Production reached a solution with a VPN service, but direct broadcast commenters noticed that broadcasting was ever over.
The premise of “Famiehungry” – Orwin is mentorsed by a tiktok user who acts as a guide to the frantic application universe – also offers a quick story of the origin of the show.
In 2020, Orwin was working on a youth therapy project when he met Jax Valentine, who was 15 years old and had about 30,000 followers of Tiktok – no guarantee of fame in an app driven by widespread trends in many accounts. But for Orwin, an artist who saw the opportunity to be exhausted during the coronavirus pandemic, 30,000 people who watched your work was incredible.
“I had lost all my audience, ”she said. “I had lost all my income. And here was a 15-year-old who had access to the followers and was making money from the app. ”
This led Orwin to think about developing a show about Tiktok. Valentine, who is now 21 years old with 80,000 followers of Tiktok, calls the theater virtually, from their bedroom to Sheffield, England, and trains Orwin how to be successful in the app.
A screen designed behind Orwin shows the direct transmission of Tiktok, with direct users online, as well as in writing that only the internal audience can see. As Orwin laughs constantly on the mobile camera, the text she wrote shines on the screen: “It makes me want to take off your head.”
One aspect of Orwin’s performance is whether TIKTOK will deactivate its live transmission for violation of community guidelines. In Wednesday’s show, two of her accounts were closed for sexual content due to a cucumber on the screen and, later, a blurred gulf. Orwin switched to real -time spare accounts.
“It is interesting who can censor and who is not censored,” said Vania Myers, who followed the show on the opening evening.
“Something amazing” that promised Orwin – it follows whether or not direct broadcasting reaches 20,000 likes – includes a song and a last humiliating act. As the public responds, often with laughter or applause, Valentine’s projection on the wall quietly looks at the crowd.
Although the show highlights many of the traps of Tiktok, Orwin and Valentine pointed out that there is no slight moral judgment on a platform with vulnerable and real drawbacks. For Valentine, the app has been a tool for building self -esteem, but also a place where they saw their “thirst traps” to perform better when they were not yet grown.
“We don’t want anyone just to leave the show and go home and say, ‘Tiktok is terrible,'” said Valentine. “We want people to leave it and say, ‘Ok, that’s harsh. What is the nuance that surrounds it? ‘”
By the time of the final on Wednesday, Orwin’s performance had received more than 8,000 likes in Tiktok. But because the show had started two accounts, its online audience had diminished.
“I hope the three people who looked at Tiktok really liked this,” Orwin said in the final moments.
On the screen, the user361307021887 commented: “I liked”.