WeeTube

Part performance, part parlour game, WeeTube uses the publicly posted comments found under popular YouTube Videos as performance text in an effort to highlight both the brilliant and the mundane found in the world’s most populated critical discourse.

Behind one of the most influential media on earth, YouTube, lurks an immense community of people who comment upon its content, often anonymously. In this virtual world, the usual niceties of courtesy and amiability do not seem to apply. In the performance WeeTube, the world’s most notorious YouTube videos are the backdrop for a performance hosted by James Long and Maiko Yamamoto of Theatre Replacement. Using the publicly posted comments that follow these videos and placing them in familiar dramatic settings, they engage in a revealing and disturbing dialogue that will make you question our species and ROFL at the same time.

“First baffling and then hilarious, each of these scenes offers dialogue revealing the intimate inanity of a world where people communicate through the ether in meaningless jabber. I have seen the future, and it is a LOL funny freak show.”
–Vancouver Sun

“It is amazing how people in the supposed anonymity of virtual space employ insult, racisms and worse. With WeeTube, Theatre Replacement expertly reveals an alternate world and how its language is formed.”
–Nachtkritk.de, Germany

WORLD PREMIERE
HIVE2, Magnetic North Theatre Festival
June 5-14, 2008
VANCOUVER

BC Scene, SWARM
April 21, 2009
NAC Performer’s Lounge
OTTAWA

Festival TransAmériques, MICROCLIMATS
May 22 & 23, 2009
Monument-National
MONTREAL

PAZZ Performing Arts Festival
October 22-25, 2009
Herman’s Apartment
OLDENBURG, GERMANY

Fusebox Festival
April 30 & May 1, 2010
Thinkwell
AUSTIN, TEXAS

Noorderzon Festival
August 19-22, 2010
Ophelia Tent
GRONINGEN, NETHERLANDS

Supernova Theatre Festival
May 26-29, 2011
Neptune Theatre STUDIO
HALIFAX

Undercurrents Festival
February 14-19, 2012
GCTC Studio
OTTAWA

Free Fall Festival
March 26-28, 2012
Theatre Centre
TORONTO

High Performance Rodeo
January 22 & 23, 2016
The Legion
CALGARY