Written and Performed by Louise Orwen
Review by Florence Carr-Jones
Fame Hungry is a performance art piece, social experiment, and manifesto about the state of performance in our modern world.
The show is live from Summerhall in Edinburgh for the physical audience and streamed live on TikTok for everyone else. However, the experience on TikTok vastly differs from the view in Summerhall’s Main Hall. Orwin uses these two mediums adjacently – live theatre performance art, which she has been experimenting with for the past ten years in front of audiences ranging from “ten to two hundred people”, and the hyper Gen-Z space of TikTok, which she has been experimenting with for the last five years under the mentorship of Jax Valentine. Jax, now twenty years old, met Orwin five years ago when they had 20,000 TikTok followers; they now have 80,000. Jax is also part of the show via a Zoom live stream from their bedroom, appearing on a TV screen on stage left, a spiritual guide watching and mentoring Orwin through her TikTok live and, for the most part, seemingly unfazed by the whole event. Orwin uses the in-between state to expertly dissect and interrogate the synapse between live, in-person performance and online performance in the hyper Gen-Z world of TikTok.
Orwin announces that she bought the entire set from TikTok Shop. It has a sparse, isolated appearance reminiscent of how the Willy Wonka Glasgow experience looked. Still, instead of Wonka-themed paraphernalia, it seems like a collection of things long lost behind the back of a shelf in Claire’s Accessories. Pink hair drapes from her ring-lit dresser, while her microphones, tripods and treadmill are covered in snot-green fur. In one corner, a teddy bear with a light-up beating heart cuddles a pink Yazoo milkshake, and in another, a mesh cage resembling an ice cream sundae traps pastel-coloured teddy bears inside.
Orwin expertly extracts a Diet Coke from the cherry on top of the mesh teddy prison. She opens it into the mic on her dresser and pours it languidly into a pastel pink Stanley cup for the overt pleasure of the live TikTok audience. Meanwhile, the physical audience in Summerhall watches from above, observing the action, reaction, and everything in between. The whole show is a game in which Orwin aims to get 10,000 likes on her livestream while the Fringe audience watches. As the likes and viewers on her livestream increase, we are drawn deeper into the world of TikTok and Orwin’s search for meaning within it. The piece is unlike any live theatre you will have ever experienced, yet utterly familiar if you are a TikTok user. It is innovative, relevant, and alive.
What is most impressive about the piece is how it bridges the online Gen Z world, represented by Jax, with Orwin’s Millennial perspective, communicating this experience to an intergenerational audience. I sat next to a lovely older Edinburgh local, and we chatted before the show. As we left, they asked me, “Is that really what TikTok is like? Do you all really waste that much time on it?” Reflecting on the many mornings and nights I’ve spent scrolling and the recognised familiarity in what I had just watched, I replied, somewhat sheepishly, “Yeah.” FameHungry is an education for some and a reckoning for others.
Innovative, Relevant, Alive
Famehungry runs at the Summerhall – The Main Hall, Edinburgh, until August 26th on select dates.
Running time – One hour and ten minutes without interval
Photo credit – Cleimence Rebourg
Review by Dominic Corr (contact@corrblimey.uk)
Florence recently graduated with a degree in History from the University of Edinburgh, where her passion for theatre often took precedence over her academic studies. During her time at university, she was actively involved in many theatre societies, but her deep passion was with Theatre Paradok, the experimental theatre society, where she served as president this past year. She is the director and writer of her own company, Fools and Thieves, and will begin a Master’s in Drama Directing at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School this September. Florence is particularly fascinated by interdisciplinary approaches to theatre and how the medium can evolve in the contemporary world.
