What's happened
Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching? tests a chilling look at how far screens and desire push us, pooling a brutal array of real-world cruelty through a compact traverse-stage experience. It stares at our screens while asking what we owe to the people we watch.
What's behind the headline?
Analysis
- The piece confronts the ethics of online viewing with a relentless, punchy structure that mirrors scrolling feeds.
- It treats voyeurism as a social symptom and interrogates how platforms monetise cruelty.
- The production leans into stark lighting and rapid scene changes to keep the audience off-balance, insisting on accountability for viewers as much as for content creators.
- The piece will likely shift conversations about digital culture, pressing audiences to reflect on their own consumption patterns.
Key takeaways
- It will force a reckoning about consent, privacy, and the real victims behind online clips.
- The show’s ruthlessly direct style aims to provoke discussion rather than comfort.
How we got here
A contemporary stage piece directed by Jess Edwards interprets Georgie Dettmer’s Are You Watching? for the London stage, translating the web-saturated, voyeuristic tales into a live performance.
Our analysis
The Guardian, Kate Wyver; The Guardian, Ryan Gilbey; The Guardian, Arifa Akbar; New York Times, Mike Hale
Go deeper
- What did you think of the way the stage treated the internet as a character?
- Which specific stories lingered with you after the final scene?
- Do you see this as a call for policy changes or personal behavioural shifts?