Are YOU WATCHING?
“He undresses. He stands behind the camera and presses record. He approaches.”
Porn. Deepfakes. Disappearing girls. A journalist wired to a machine. A mother’s grief sold for clicks.
As the lines blur between entertainment and abuse, technology and sex, violence and voyeurism - who’s complicit and who is in control? And are you watching?
Georgie Dettmer makes her professional playwriting debut with this world premiere.
Photography by Madeleine Penfold.
Writer Georgie Dettmer
Director Jess Edwards
Set and Costume Designer Georgia Wilmot
Lighting Designer Bethany Gupwell
Composer and Sound Designer XANA
Intimacy Coordinator Joana Nastari
Fight Director Jonathan Holby
Assistant Director Yanni Ng
Dramaturg Gillian Greer
Casting Director Saffeya Shebli
Cast Kosar Ali, Billy Bolt, Abby McCann, Lucy McCormick, Maimuna Memon, Nicholas Rowe
REVIEWS FOR ARE YOU WATCHING?
“Are You Watching? sufficiently shatters whatever protective barrier lets us believe we’re not active participants in what we watch.”
— Kate Wyver for The Guardian (4-stars)
“It’s a highly impressive professional debut, tackling burning issues with snap, wit and rage. Director Jess Edwards responds with a febrile, fluent staging that cleverly amplifies the concerns about consent and complicity.”
— Sarah Hemming for Financial Times (4-stars)
“Located within the grievous Venn diagram where sex, violence and cruelty overlap, Dettmer posits a world in which virtually anything is available for consumption, whether online or in real life, and no matter how grim. The result makes for a swift, scalding 65 minutes, directed with characteristic precision by Jess Edwards.”
— Matt Wolf for London Theatre (4-stars)
“Every actor, most of them playing multiple roles, is at the absolute top of their game, and Dettmer displays an unerring ear for dialogue and a fierce, bold theatrical imagination, fully matched here by cast and creatives.”
— Alun Hood for WhatsOnStage (4-stars)
“Are You Watching? offers no easy resolution. Instead, it leaves its audience sitting with discomfort, questioning their own gaze and the systems that shape it. It is an ambitious and unsettling piece that demands reflection, even if what you find in the mirror is not something you want to see.”
— Daisy Hills for Everything Theatre (4-stars)
“Are You Watching? is an ambitious, unsettling and frequently brilliant examination of voyeurism, sexual violence and the uneasy relationship between spectatorship and complicity in the digital age. At just over an hour, it is relentless in both form and subject matter, leaving audiences with little room to breathe and even less room to escape the questions it poses.”
— Liam Arnold for Theatre and Tonic (4-stars)