Review: FAMEHUNGRY (Summerhall)

Time is ticking for Louise Orwin

Raving hamsters, fortune tellers, video-gaming grandmothers, cosplayers, factory workers, calligraphers, aggressive pro-lifers, and a man who hasn’t slept in 48 hours because of non-stop alarms. Where can all these be found, begging for roses and cowboy hats? TikTok of course! In Louise Orwin’s multimedia performance, she chronicles her journey into the app. Here, we learn so many performance artists have set up camp in the new age of digital entertainment, each vying for your attention however they can. Orwin brings together foreboding projects, TikTok shop tat, a thumping electro-pop soundscape, and a live audience (us) and streams it all live to her other audience – her followers.

We are also joined via Zoom by her student-turned-mentor Jax, a content creator who sings and makes the occasional thirst trap. Although it is certainly "live" in the literal sense, the interactions lack the looseness that makes liveness so exciting, digitally or in theatre. Her interactions with Jax appear very scripted, and although it is well written in parts it feels stiff and inauthentic. Throughout most of the performance Orwin spirals from one activity to another, while projects overhead tell us about what she has learned about the possibilities, the limitations, and the lingo of the platform – rizz, vibe check, corecore, etc. The way she performs attention-grabbing acts (lollipop-licking, running, dousing herself in drinks) side-by-side with the screen view of the same visual is illuminating. Something that seems deranged in person just seems desperate on a screen, and a digital audience of thousands seems overwhelming compared to a physical audience of around fifty.

Her purpose isn’t to condemn TikTok (or at least it wasn’t when she started this project) but to explore what it means to be a performer and find an audience. It is reminiscent of 2018’s See Through, a documentary drama about internet fame on YouTube. A lot has changed in the content-creation landscape since then, and like See Through it is astutely researched but unlike that show it is immensely cynical. For everything we learn about TikTok and modern fame, the real focus of the performance is Orwin herself, how tired she is feeding the monster of social media and her dismay at the direction it is taking the arts. “I feel like I’m staring the death of my craft in the face”, she says to Jax. “Adapt or die, baby” they reply.

Photo Credit: Clemence Rebourg

It is a tragic sentiment, epitomising how FAMEHUNGRY tries to work from two angles at once; an autobiographical angle, and a meta performance art angle. But we don’t learn enough about Orwin for the former, and we never get a fully-rounded defence for the latter, perhaps because it was too ambitious in the first place. Instead what FAMEHUNGRY offers are explanations, deep dives, and criticisms piled on top of each other to the point of being intentionally disorienting. The overstimulating nature of the piece is an achievement in itself, as a user of that accursed app I have never seen such an accurate depiction of what it is like to use it, get lost in it, and get addicted to it. But, like the very app it depicts, it leaves the audience wanting. Three stars.