Writer: Candela May
Directors: Raquel Arnaiz and Candela May
Miss A has a number of obsessions which she shares over social media. The most harmless is a love for the actor Robert Pattinson, something that is focussed less on his recent roles in the likes of The Batman and The Lighthouse, and more on his Twilight era as a brooding teen vampire.
But while her obsessive adoration of the actor has its amusing sides, including talking along with a scene from the movies where she constructs her own dialogue to replace that of Kirsten Stewart’s Bella, there is something else pulling at her mental health: her anorexia.
Candela May’s highly personal piece utilises mobile phone videos to give us an impression of the pervasive nature of social media posts and how they can affect those who are struggling. As Miss A, she monologues into a succession of devices: once she is done, the videos replay on loop, the sound of her previous works forming a continual background noise.
And it is because of the content of these loops, of a young woman who has come to regard her illness as something to be coveted, that is both the most troubling and most effective part of May’s work. For those with anorexia, social media offers forms of reinforcement that are at best unhealthy, a continual undercurrent of assurance and avoidance. May’s character herself makes videos showing others how to “get away with” not eating.
But at other times, May’s writing and performance seem rather more impenetrable. Other parts of the performance involve May dancing in her underwear, which feels less connected to Miss A’s mental health struggles than one would hope. A segment in which the character imagines she’s a celebrity on a TV chat show hosted by a projected animation of Mark Zuckerberg highlights Miss A’s narcissism, something that the faux Zuckerberg explicitly calls her out on. But other, more indulgent and opaque sequences seem to suggest that Miss A is joined in her attention-seeking by May herself.
The show’s conclusion, in which the fake social media posts she has been posting throughout is replaced by a live broadcast on the show’s Instagram page which the audience can only experience through their phones, is innovative and spooky, the differing time delays on each personal device causing May’s voice to echo eerily through the space.
Viewing on one’s own phone can at least guarantee a good view of the artist: before then, the show’s erratic blocking often places May in poses on the floor where other audience members’ heads obscure her from view – a problem that would be exacerbated with a fuller house.
That adds to the feeling that this intensely personal piece is more for the benefit of the person on stage than their audience. There is a sense that Seen 00:25 has a lot it wants to say about eating disorders, and the negative effect that social media often has on those with such conditions. But for such messages to be heard, they need to be projected outwards a little better.
Reviewed on 19 March 2023
