Chief among social media’s benefits must be the ability to sleuth your way into a crush’s world — to discover their likes on Facebook, their tagged friends on Instagram, their jobs past and present on LinkedIn — and create an idea of a person that perfectly suits one’s imagination.
For 27-year-old Annabel in Through the Looking Screen by Anne Chmelewsky, social media is the perfect outlet for her crushing on her colleague Sebastian. “Annabelle herself is kind of shy in person,” says director Eileen Kuo. “He’s in a big crowd. So she finds herself blossoming more online, and so the show is about her discovering social networking and social media and learning about people online and having lots of friends online. So it’s through this medium that she’s really trying to get to know her crush and piece together who he is.”
The show, a production of Quark Theatre, is a one-woman operetta, with Jacquelene Cooper starring. “This role calls for somebody with an opera background, but also a musical theater background to translate a story like this,” Kuo says. “[Cooper] can do it all. Seeing what she can do on stage, she was really the perfect fit.
“It’ll be just me and her on the stage; I’ll accompany her on the piano,” the director continues. “And so it’s sort of a musical journey of her experiencing the internet, singing through her feelings and thoughts, just everything that she’s going through trying to connect online.”
While the music is classical, it is innately modern in its themes, creating an interesting juxtaposition not unlike how social media, while connective, can also be equally isolating. This show was conceived of in 2011, says Kuo, yet its relevance remains even through all of social media’s changes. “I think at that time people were just first starting to experience, ‘oh gosh, all these notifications, all these people want to connect with me,’ but that’s something we still experience today. We’re still trying to get likes. We’re still trying to get excellent social media engagement. … It’s such a current and updated story that I think a lot of people will find really relatable.
“I hope audiences walk away with just a warm, fuzzy feeling having gotten to know Annabelle as a character,” Kuo adds. “But also, I hope they walk away with some conversations about our relationships with social media.”
Quark’s production of Through the Looking Screen marks the North American premiere and Quark Theatre’s first musical. Chmelewsky, the composer, charged no licensing fee, and she and Quark instead donated what would have been the fee to Stax Music Academy.
Purchase tickets at quarktheatre.com. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., with 2 p.m. Sunday matinees.
Through the Looking Screen, TheatreSouth at First Congo, 1000 Cooper Street, Friday, September 20–October 6, $20.