PREVIEW: FAMEHUNGRY – Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, Friday 27 and Saturday 28 November, 2026
Prepare for the provocative and unpredictable when performance artist Louise Orwin brings her award-winning show FAMEHUNGRY to Brighton Dome later this month.
Rejecting a script – or anything even vaguely approaching a safe format, Orwin fuses her theatre show with live TikToking as she works to an unsuspecting online audience as well as her inhouse one. In a show that promises to be nothing if not a riot, she asks, in a very public way, the very personal question, ‘How can this performance artist compete in a dizzying digital age?’
In her quest to find out if she (39 years old) has any future in the brave new algorithmically-led world, FAMEHUNGRY sees Orwin enlisting the help of Gen Z TikToker Jax Valentine (23 years old, 80k followers) to guide her through a bewildering world of dance trends, 24-hour live-streaming, face filters and endless monetisable content. She performs an escalating series of tasks inspired by TikTok trends to win over an invisible mass audience who may love her, troll her, fetishise her, or attempt to destroy her as she considers whether it is possible to make art and find beauty and hope in the relentless attention economy.
Previous performances have seen her trolled by neo-Nazis, egged on by schoolgirls and tipped by strangers. She has also, apparently, countless times been suspended from her own TikTok account mid-show for ‘adult sexual content’ (of which there is none).
Louise Orwin is a fearless artist working across traditional boundaries in performance, text, film and movement. Her work has been described as experimental, visually bold and socially risky. FAMEHUNGRY is all three, with social media, perhaps ironically, offering her brand of art rich subject matter as she investigates how it is reshaping our sense of identity, labour, value and visibility, as well as what it means for artists working outside the mainstream.
The seeds for FAMEHUNGRY were sown when, mid-existential crisis and watching the arts industry crumble around her, Orwin met a 15-year-old TikToker with 50,000 followers performing daily to audiences bigger than she had ever dreamt of. The resulting show was a hit for her from Edinburgh to New York to Mexico to Malta. It won the List X Sit Up Award 2024, Summerhall Lustrum Award 2024 and The Space Digital Award 2023, and was shortlisted for Arts Council England’s Digital Innovation Content 2024. It is touring internationally again for 2026-27.
Brace yourself for a crazy show about an increasingly crazy world as it comes to Brighton.
Details
Dates: 27 and 28 November 2026
Venue: Brighton Dome Studio Theatre, New Road, Brighton, East Sussex BN1 1UE
Tickets: Tickets are priced at £20, £18 concessions, £10 low-income concession (limited).
Accessibility: This event is seated. BSL interpreted on Saturday 28 November. Venue access details available here.
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