Brighton Fringe 2023
Can I Be Bored Now ?
Lea Sep & Nikolina Tomić
Genre: Comedy, Contemporary, Experimental, Fringe Theatre, New Writing, Visual Art
Venue: Latest Music Bar. 14-17 Manchester St, Brighton, Brighton and Hove, Brighton BN2 1TF
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
Blimey!. I’d thought the performance was over – we’d left the Latest Music Bar amazed and amused – from where the two women had given us an hour-long exposition of just how deeply our mobile phones are embedded in our lives
And now, on the bus home, it was still going on! Every seat was occupied by someone scrolling, or texting, or swiping – oblivious to anyone else – locked into a symbiotic relationship with their mobile. It felt almost exactly like the show we’d seen – but without the jokes and the songs …
Review
Very funny jokes; beautiful, rather haunting songs from Lea Sep on her guitar, and hugely engaging graphics drawn by Nikolina Tomić. These were projected onto a large white screen at the rear of the Latest Bar stage, and Sep and Tomić, clad in simple black leotards, performed their show in front of it.
Wonderful images – I could be highbrow here and tell you that they provided ‘an illustrated history of human and technological evolution’, but let’s just say that they were simple, low resolution drawings that perfectly reinforced the performers’ words. When they talked about how our early ancestors left the caves and invented fire, for instance, they flashed up sketches of long-haired people dressed in animal skins. Sep got a laugh when she gave the reason for leaving the security of cave-dwelling was because the cave was ‘boring’. In this potted history – humanity invented fire, then war, then religion, then electricity and industry – and finally, social media …
‘Engaging’ is just the right word for the images – Marshall McLuhan wrote about the cartoon medium, with its “very low degree of data about objects, and the resulting high degree of participation by the viewer, in order to complete what is only hinted at …” We have to fill in the detail, and it seems that our brains find that activity very satisfying.
McLuhan was interested in how we use different media. His basic idea was – ‘The Medium Is The Message’ – that different technologies (print, TV, telephones) affect us differently, change our view of the world, and alter the way we behave. So getting our (yesterday’s) information from a daily newspaper is completely different from receiving it with the immediacy of TV coverage; though still as a passive consumer. And worlds away from the possibility of joining in as part of the online debate, that our current social media offer. McLuhan was writing in the 1960s, and his concept of the ‘Global Village’ brought us the whole planet through the television set. But it was all one-way – these days, the technology is interactive and everyone from world leaders to your youngest cousin puts out their thoughts on Twitter or TikTok.
Because this production is all about social media. It’s just a mobile phone or a laptop, but it CONNECTS us with other people. We can see what’s going on – we can take part … At one point Lea Sep tells us that the first thing she does when she wakes up in the morning – even before she pees – is to touch her mobile and start scrolling. In one of her songs she talks about coming home at the end of a long day, tired, but Facebook says she’s ‘Active’ so she’s online. She’s actually sitting on the loo, “pooping”, but at the same time – “I’m texting a very cute guy. He thinks I’m in sexy lingerie – I fart, and I send a winky face …” Constant gales of laughter from the audience following gags like these.
See what I mean about McLuhan? This thing is meant to be a telephone, but it’s become essential to our very existence. Maps, banking, information, communication, whatever you want. There were lots of snatches of vox-pop soundtrack, and in one of them a young guy explains that his phone gives him “an alarm clock, train times, Apple Pay to buy the tickets … if it was lost, I’d be completely screwed!” In an earlier section, Lea Sep told us that our phones are now smarter and faster than we will ever be – and that that makes them predators. But how can something so familiar, so physically close, be a threat? …
The production settings are very imaginative. There was video of one of them actually sitting on the loo (shot from her own viewpoint ) and all we can see is her knees, and her hands holding her mobile phone. She’s scrolling, and swiping, and although it’s a video of the live woman, the phone is a cardboard cut-out, and there’s a long strip of images she pulls through it as she’s interacting with the screen. Finally she pulls the strip out and winds it round her shoulders like a long scarf – though perhaps a boa-constrictor would be more relevant to how she’s trapped …
‘Can I Be Bored Now?’ is very funny, but it’s also the most thought-provoking show I’ve seen in this Fringe. When I first read the title, I couldn’t decide whether it was a request to someone for permission; or a rhetorical comment about the never-ending stream of stimulation that our social media give us. Once they’re posted up, insignificant experiences become ‘Statements’. A cacophony of voices is clamouring for our attention. In one bit, Sep’s scrolling news items, reading them without really engaging, then swiping to move on to the next. “Someone fathers a child at 82 -Yuk” – Swipe – “A passenger opens the door of a plane at 20,000 feet – Swipe – “Donkeys have the prettiest vaginas of all mammals” (!!!) – Swipe. Sep and Tomić play sisters, and at one point there’s been a power cut, and they’ve sat in the dark for hours with no charging for the phone. When the power (and charge) comes back, Tomić is desperate to message all her contacts to tell them what’s happened. This is how we live now …
During almost an hour of pretty frantic activity – jokes, songs, banter between Sep and Tomić, scraps of comments projected on screen like torn Post-It Notes – there was one idyllic interlude where the screen showed a video of a lake at sunset. Nothing happening, just peace and calm, then Nikolina Tomić came on stage and spent a few minutes skimming pebbles onto the water. It was beautifully staged – the woman crouched down searching for the stones, in mime, and then performed the flicking action, in front of the screen. As she did so, the video showed the pebbles as they skipped across the water. Seamless interaction of live activity and film. Cleverly done, but also a wonderfully illustrative contrast with the overloaded chatter that constantly pours out of our social media devices.
Trust me – ‘Can I Be Bored Now?’ is something you really shouldn’t miss. Lea Sep and Nikolina Tomić are a hugely talented pair of writers and performers, and they’ve produced that very rare combination of ‘vastly entertaining’ and ‘profoundly relevant’.
Catch it if you possibly can – I promise you won’t be bored …
Strat Mastoris
