Acclaimed devising company Theatre Témoin are taking their hit show Feed on a tour of the UK in 2020. After the sell-out success of The Marked and The Fantasist, the company returns, bringing their vibrant visual style to the world of click-bait culture, fake news and cyber gluttony.
A Palestinian woman takes a striking photograph of a boy. Her girlfriend, a journalist, steals the image for an article. A teenage blogger is moved to tears by the article and posts a tribute. An SEO specialist makes the blogger’s tribute go viral. Now caught in an unstoppable media storm, the four individuals spiral out of control, moving from reality to dark fantasy as the algorithms deliver ‘what people want’.
…a disquieting glimpse into the festering heart of the internet, told with a darkness and vibrancy that compulsively grips… There’s a fascinating fluidity to Feed as it stretches and swells, enhancing and exaggerating until there’s blood on the floor, vicious internet trolls at the gates, and Peck is the devil incarnate (The Stage).
Exploring how algorithms and capitalism shape today’s news and, in turn, how this shapes us, Feed takes a hard look at the dark absurdity of the contemporary media landscape. Theatre Témoin’s bold use of new writing and Bouffon combine in an incisive farce which turns a critical eye on the addiction and narcissism that runs through online civic engagement.
Director Ailin Conant comments, On the surface, the media landscape reeks of echo chambers, fake news, and social division. Feed asks if these are an inevitable by-product of capitalism by highlighting the fact that our focus—our engagement, our emotional arousal, and the time we spend with our eyeballs drinking in content—is the greatest commodity on the current market.
Theatre Témoin is committed to engaging communities in the process of making their work and have conducted numerous R&D workshops with young people during its development. Feed is a co-production with The Lowry and The Everyman Cheltenham and is supported by Arts Council England and The Charles Irving Trust.
