Celebrity

Project Arts Centre, Dublin Preview Jan 11 Opens Jan 12-19 8.15pm (Sat mat 3.15pm) 15/10 project artscentre.ie 01-8819613

In the future, prophesised Andy Warhol, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes. These days, when people measure their renown in terms of “friends” and “followers”, nearly everyone has become the star of their own movie. But in Peer to Peer’s new production, written by Jody O’Neill and directed by Carl Kennedy, the idea is to peel back celebrity culture and discover something real beneath. That’s not a small order when the play sounds like both a critique and emulation of digitally enhanced reality.

Pitched as a tale of love gone wrong, with a hook-up in cyberspace that careers towards a real-life disaster, Celebritycan begin for audiences online if you choose to befriend the mercilessly ubiquitous Simon White on Facebook, or browse the pages of a spot-on emulation of a celebrity rag at celebritymagazine.ie .

A jaundiced view of celebrity culture is not especially new, and the phenomenon of media- aroused self-dissatisfaction and Hollywood aspiration seems as mockable as it is inescapable. However, as writer and performer, O’Neill (above) is both adventurous and evolving. Performing a fractured intertext of words, dance and music with Matthew Ralli, she seeks a form to match the fragments of pop culture. Catch this show early and you can say you saw them before they were famous.

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Void Story Project Arts Centre, Dublin