For most of us it is probably the biggest mystery of the century, what is it that makes content go viral online? And how do YouTubers get millions of subscribers doing make-up tutorials? Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO for short, is the holy grail algorithm that determines what we see in our feed and, more importantly what gets bumped to the top.
Theatre Témoin are firm favourites of the fringe, having had sell out shows such as The Fantasist, and their new piece, Feed has been developed in a series of workshops with the help of young people, who are probably the best placed to explore this mysterious world of content creation.
Feed centres on the media circus that erupts when a journalist, better known for clickbait articles, writes a piece on the Palestine conflict, she uses a photograph taken by her girlfriend without her permission and this causes an upset in the relationship. A vlogger seizes on the popularity of the article to get more views, aided by an SEO specialist it descends in to a vicious cycle of searching for more and more traffic.
Theatre Témoin use a style known as bouffon, essentially meaning they are mocking the situation, the little advert breaks which see the cast sitting in illuminated boxes are a good example of how the satire is woven in to the production. In a kind of A/B split test, it begins as a straight narrative before turning quite surrealist, and that’s not necessarily to everyone’s tastes.
The cast do a good job with the material, and director, Ailin Conant makes sure that the overall piece is visually appealing. The first half, which is more traditional in style starts to pique the audience’s interest, but by the end Feed has become almost as much of a mystery as the subject it is tackling.
