Out! Out! is a vibrant and joyful new play from the mind of Joanna Geronimo, debuting at Alphabetti Theatre, using audience participation to convey a message of the importance of connectedness in a digital world.
The play follows the life of mother Joanna, who plays herself in the show. She begins by speaking about her addiction to “sharing” and how she seems to be unable to do anything without posting about it on social media. One night, she goes out to the club and doesn’t look at her phone once! She dances all night and has a brilliant time. But how will anyone believe it happened if she didn’t share it?
The audience is alongside Joanna as she works to break this bond with her phone. The most exciting part of the play was that she uses audience participation to do this. We were invited to play games with her, to sing and dance, and to shout out our reactions. This worked extremely well with the theme of the play, as it allowed us to stay present in the reality of that moment and engage with the people around us. This worked really well in the intimate space of Alphabetti Theatre, and you could feel the audience was captured by it.
Joanna’s acting was captivating, and the audience instantly fell in love with her. The performance was extremely vibrant, and she could easily make the whole theatre laugh with a dance or facial expression. The audience felt very welcomed by her to engage in participation.
However, because of the focus on audience participation and how short the play was, I felt like I came away knowing very little about Joanna’s character. For me, this made it difficult to connect with her. On the other hand, I do think Joanna was trying to get the audience to connect with one another rather than just with her, so maybe it didn’t matter that we didn’t get to know her character.
The set was very well thought out, with a phone screen projected onto the back wall of the theatre. Being so dominant in the space showed well how captivated we all are by our phones. The lighting design worked really well to show the changes in the setting, especially when Joanna was in the club.
It was really exciting to see this type of play being performed at Alphabetti, and I hope to have more interactive shows in the future from this theatre.