If you’ve grown up with social media your whole life, do you still know what’s real and what’s not? Social media have a significant impact on our lives. They constantly bring new messages, fake news, fake photos, and people pretending to be someone else. This can lead to problems like FOMO (fear of missing out), always being ‘on,’ low self-esteem, loneliness, and depression from feeling left out.
With the theater project ‘Emoji Theater,’ Boaz Blume from the Netherlands, Silva Belghiti from Finland, and Jamila Ouahid from Sweden aim to make deaf teenagers aged 11 to 17 aware of these influences. DNieuws spoke with Boaz, who has been rehearsing in Finland for over two weeks with Silva and Jamila for the first performance in that country on Saturday, August 10.
“What inspired us to start this theater project is that today’s teenagers have grown up with social media. They are constantly on platforms like Snapchat and TikTok but don’t realize that much of what is on social media is fake,” Boaz explains. “We want to show these teenagers, through play, what really happens in society so that they can reflect on it.”
Today’s deaf teenagers have grown up with technology. Social media interactions are different from those in real life. “In the performance, for example, we show what cyberbullying is and what it does to someone who is bullied. We also show that much of what is shown on social media only seems perfect, while it is not,” says Boaz.
Boaz also emphasizes people who pretend to be someone else on social media to lure children. “Even in deaf schools, nude photos are shared among teenagers, which can cause a lot of damage. This is also addressed in the performance.”
Boaz, Silva, and Jamila have partly grown up with social media and have also experienced times without much technology. This allows them to see how intertwined technology is with the lives of today’s teenagers. “With our theater project, we want to encourage teenagers to talk to each other and look beyond social media,” Boaz explains.
If the performance in Finland is successful, Boaz, Silva, and Jamila want to perform the piece in other countries as well. For this, they need money, which they plan to raise on a per-country basis.
“In the Netherlands, after Handtheater and the passing of Wim Emmerik (1940-2015; very active in deaf theater, ed.), the deaf theater in the Netherlands has not further developed; it has remained stable. That is unfortunate because with art and culture, you can beautifully showcase deaf culture. With theater, you can make deaf people think, reflect, and exchange ideas,” Boaz says enthusiastically.
According to Boaz, the Netherlands needs cooperation between various organizations, networks, and funds to organize theater for and with deaf people again. Sign language should be seen as art, and collaboration with hearing people in the theater world is necessary. “There are hearing people who only say: I want to make a performance about or for deaf people, how do I do that? But there are also hearing people who really want to collaborate with deaf people and leave it to them to create a performance. Those people are true allies, and I enjoy working with them,” says Boaz.
Boaz (left), Jamila (above) and Silva (below) on the poster from Emojis Theater (source: Instagram/@emojistheater)
