It’s All an Act (on social media)
There are a lot of memorable scenes in Funny Girl, but when I think about social media- the pregnant bride one is the one that sticks out to me. Fanny Bryce had more or less made it. She had gotten past the hey-you’re-really-talented-and-more-importantly-funny-but-you-don’t-look-or-sound-like-other-chorus-girls thing. She had gotten into a company where they wanted to feature her and showcase her work as a talented singer and actress.
She’s given this song about a beautiful bride who’s husband’s “love makes her beautiful”- they give her the part and she argues that she can’t sing it straight, that she’s not a beautiful girl, shes’s a funny girl, and no one will ever find it believable. So she finds a pillow and does this:
While it’s not crazy to think that Fanny could be a beautiful bride and could get married, it would be crazy for people to see her that way. As Rachel Dratch writes in her memoir Girl Walks into a Bar,
“I am offered solely the parts that I like to refer to as The Unf — -ables. In reality, if you saw me walking down the street, you wouldn’t point at me and recoil and throw up and hide behind a shrub. But by Hollywood standards, I’m a troll, ogre, woodland creature, or manly lesbian. … Trolls, ogres, and woodland creatures can be done with CGI, so that leaves yours truly to play the bull dykes.”
On social media, I actively feel myself in that box. In general, don’t post anything unless I’m showing:
- A cool project I’m working on
- It’s funny or culturally relevant
Social media for me is showing how hilarious and tracking the trajectory of my career as a comedic performer and writer. I rarely go personal. It’s not authentic at all. It’s Puns and Hashtags:
“when the sobriety hits and existential dread sets in again”
In fact this is a tweet I sent when I was coming to terms with the fact that my mom was losing her apartment and I needed to find a new place for us to live:
“can someone send me good vibes? and by good vibes I mean money. lots and lots of money”
It was days before I set up a GoFundMe to see if I could assemble some emergency money to help us out. I didn’t tweet that I was upset and feeling so much pressure not not f*ck up. I tweeted a joke.
There’s actually something that a theatre company I’m involved with does at the start of every rehearsal. I resent it, because as I’ve established, I hate exhibiting anything about or around myself that isn’t part of a comedy bit. We all stand around in a circle and “Check in”. Every single person says simply how they’re doing: whether they had a great day and ready to work, or recently had a family member die so to be gentle with them in rehearsal, or whether they’re just fine or tired or just sad. That is something that doesn’t happen a lot on social media.
I’ve seen a lot of support within the communities of Femsplain and BinderCon, where people are actively trying to be supportive online. They’re posting messages about self care, asking people for help by sending puppy gifs and selfies, and general positive vibes. Which is great, because people need to be checking in to support eachother on social media.
Social Media and Performance are almost the same thing. As Bo Burnham says in Make Happy,
“I worried that making a show about performing would be too meta, it wouldn’t be relatable to people that aren’t performers, but what I found is that I don’t think anyone isn’t [a performer]…Social media, it’s just the market’s answer to a generation that demanded to perform. So the market said, ‘Here, perform everything to each other, all the time, for no reason.’ It’s prison. It’s horrific. It is performer and audience melded together…I know very little about anything, but what I do know is that if you can live your life without an audience, you should do it.”
I don’t think I can live without an audience- that’s why I write and perform, but I think he’s getting at something really important. We, as performers, should be better scene partners. We should check in with other performers and see how they’re doing and treat them accordingly. We should listen more and see how their intentions affect ours. We should try to create something closer to reality as much as one would try to make something truthful onstage. This doesn’t mean oversharing or adding extra exhibition, but it means realize what we’re feeding into.
The more I think about what type of person I think I should be allowed to be on social media and what social media is, in terms of performance — Looking at it as the narrative it’s creating, I think that not understanding it in a theatrical sense is the most hurtful thing. Because there are people that are trying to be authentic on social media and it is people that are trying to tell stories of pain. It is people saying that #BlackLivesMatter because Social Media is the one place it can hit every single person that probably less than 20 feet from you, someone is afraid of the people that should be protecting them. The reason I bring this up at the end of this essay is there’s a constituent of people that can’t stand that hashtag. I still don’t get it. Why are you attacking people in mourning? Why are you trying attack people trying to come to turns how we can make actual change? I think it comes down to this perception of social media. There are people that expect on social media for it to be a state of constant performance: This is a cool thing I did, here’s a funny meme, lol at this cooking video. But when someone breaks that narrative with a hashtag and a status because they need to work through all of the pain and suffering that has cycled through the news cycle- these people that can’t accept that need attack.
Social media is more than being funny. It’s more than fitting into your role and hitting the highlights of your life. Theatre is a mirror you hold up to society. Social Media is a set of VR Glasses where you can see into someone else’s life. It’s a place where you can show the environment and experiences and hope that someone can do more than look and comment, but emphasize. To be a good scene partner.
Like every rehearsal with that theatre company, I hope on social media we find a way to check in. I’m learning to be more open and share what I’m doing. I’m trying to reach out when people are in pain. I’m trying to check in.
Let’s go around the circle. I’ll start. I’m good today and ready to work. Now you check in.
