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“If you get me to 20,000 likes, I’ll do something amazing.” That is what the performance artist Louise Orwin promises audiences in “Famehungry,” a TikTok-set existential crisis about being an entertainer in the digital age. Presented before a live crowd, it is also simultaneously livestreamed on the app.
In Wednesday’s show, Orwin performed tasks inspired by what she has seen on TikTok Live: eating in front of the camera, running on a treadmill, drinking from a Stanley Tumbler and performing TikTok dances, all while describing her career in performance art.
Whether Orwin’s antics would be witnessed by audiences beyond SoHo Playhouse, where “Famehungry” is running until Feb. 8 after success at the Edinburgh Fringe festival, was an open question this weekend as the app was briefly banned in the United States.
Congress passed legislation last year to ban TikTok unless it was sold to a government-approved buyer, citing concerns that the Chinese government could gain access to sensitive user data and manipulate content on the app, which is owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.
After the Supreme Court upheld the law last week, TikTok briefly went dark before flickering back to life for many users when the incoming president, Donald J. Trump, indicated support for the app.
For many, what ultimately was an interruption in service became a joke. But the app’s legal status is murky, and Orwin is one of the users who still does not have access to TikTok.
The premise of “Famehungry” — Orwin is mentored by a TikTok user who acts as a guide to the app’s frenetic universe — also offers a quick history of the show’s origins.
In 2020, Orwin was working in a youth theater therapy project when she met Jax Valentine, who was 15 and had about 30,000 TikTok followers — no guarantee of celebrity on an app driven by trends spread across many accounts.
One aspect of Orwin’s performance is whether TikTok will turn off her livestream for violating community guidelines. In Wednesday’s show, two of her accounts were shut down for sexual content because of an onscreen cucumber and, later, a vaguely phallic lollipop.
The “something amazing” that Orwin promised — she follows through whether or not the livestream reaches 20,000 likes — involves a song and a final debasing act.
By the time of the finale on Wednesday, Orwin’s performance had received more than 8,000 likes on TikTok. But because the show had been kicked off two accounts, its online audience had dwindled.
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