This is not a review of “Ratatouille, the TikTok Musical.” Nor is this a how-to-understand-this-new-app-thing-and-exploit-amateurs-when-thousands-of-professionals-are-unemployed-due-to-the-failure-of-the-system-Broadway-upholds article.

This is the first in a three-article discussion on the topic of digital contexts and behavior patterns, and their implications for the burgeoning field of digital theatre. Above all, it is a plea for the newly interested social-theatre surveyors to recognize a more Brechtian approach that has been largely absent from the trendy discourse on digital performances like ‘Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical’: make sure that the context of the performance is never forgotten.

PART ONE: AUDIENCE, CREATOR, AND DISTRIBUTION RELATIONSHIPS

Now, you’re on your phone, on an app. This is the internet. The illusions of being in it like a video game is not really the point. The thread between performer and audience like live theater is not really the point. The point is to remind you of, and make sure you are tuned into, what’s going on right there in front of you. It’s a musical, but it’s in this particular setting. The setting is a big part of the work itself, and so I argue that the TodayTix stream of “Ratatouille” swiss-cheesed the digital democracy of its TikTok origins- the very quality that gave it flavor in the first place.

“Ratatouille” (both the TikTok collectivism and the streamed presentation) is a case study that provides two approaches to online theatre-making, the perfect dichotomy in which to examine how we connect with an audience in the infinite abyss of the internet, and more specifically TikTok.

The stream itself had Broadway professionals from cast to crew stitch together a basic, complete book musical from the many independent TikToks that made up the trend. The project, a fundraiser for The Actors Fund yet comprised of work created outside that professional prism, was hosted online as a streaming video available to view in an allotted time frame: a TV station approach to media distribution where one sends the signal out and whoever’s checking into it will check into it; you’re not necessarily going to know who or where they are, but you can quantify viewership and monetary data.

But viewing the original dispersed components of the show within the context of TikTok’s platform, you don’t get the TV distribution feel, you get something akin to an audience feel, whatever that is. Whether you contributed to the hundreds of clips by making, liking, commenting, or watching them, the feeling of engagement is similar to what we achieve in live theater audiences: a mix of observation yet playing a vital part in the piece through reaction. Having this latent characteristic of interactivity gave hundreds of people the power to collaborate against one shared idea. While there were certainly opinions on what was “canon,” its multi-authored nature meant inherently there was no official version. Anyone could cook participate.

But if the intention after its viral success is for professionals to mine the app for future “legit” productions—adapting TikTok’s single-player with multiplayer component and time-defiant UX—into “something terminal, that starts and ends,” we must answer how and why.

It’s not news that the people are hungry for a larger controlling stake in Broadway (see: #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, Henry Jenkins’ work on fandom and participatory culture). What “Ratatouille” achieved was an example of a decentralization of the seat and pulse of creation usually reserved for institutions like Broadway. Expanding access to and distribution of collective creativity beyond the limitations of a physical theater has happened before: the invention of cast recordings, YouTube, the internet in general. It is only in this moment we have a unique chance to encourage it.

I recognize that the collective idea of “Broadway” used here is comprised of a relative handful of marketeers of an otherwise transient, invisible system of many institutions. It is actually just a relative few individuals, and thus we have the chance to set aside our capitalist norms during this unprecedented time, and think instead, “Just because musical/theatrical creativity is occurring in a space, does that mean it is my right or role to “legitimize” it?”

In the case of “Ratatouille” the presentation, many creators did get a dream fulfilled, recognition, and viral acclaim (although impossible to incorporate or even know every contribution to the collectivism on TikTok, many more did not). The presentation’s goal was to be an homage to the creativity of the app’s community, while also being a love letter for an ailing Broadway. It was no surprise then when newly written Broadway references dotted the script. But for those tuning in not as Broadway fans, but as trend-participatory or curious spectators, these references could easily be lost, or even exclusionary.

Just like how the presentation added these Broadway community references, TikTok is predicated and thrives on snowballed content, jokes, and meanings that the uninitiated can easily miss. Unlike a straightforward book or movie to stage adaptation, context and content of TikTok musicals is inextricable. If the practice of adapting organic online collectivism into one cohesive whole is to be continued, digital behavior patterns need to be considered and understood as an evolving practice that merits equal investigation and consideration as other audience behavior patterns studied by our industry. Allow our traditional adaptation toolbox to rust, and allow for newly minted skills and understandings to emerge.

In Part 2: I’ll dive into how TikTok and other collaborative-based apps are created in direct rejection of self-echo chamber patterns latent in the social media of the last fifteen years, and why digital behavior patterns on these new platforms matter as we engage with art being created on them, in digital spaces that will only continue to evolve.

Have an idea, question, or comment? Contact me at natalie@jeanealogyproductions.com

'Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical’: A Case Study of Connecting to a Digital Theatre Audience: Part 1

PART ONE: AUDIENCE, CREATOR, AND DISTRIBUTION RELATIONSHIPS

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