F. Off comes to the Edinburgh Fringe this summer, inviting the audience to become judge and jury in a new production that sees the Facebook generation put the social network on trial, presented by the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain (NYT). Written by London Evening Standard’s ‘one-to-watch’ Tatty Hennessy in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the play delves into the darkest depths of social media with a cast of 12 interrogating the highs and lows of Facebook. Wittily directed by NYT Artistic Director Paul Roseby, F. Off will run at Underbelly’s Belly Button from 2 to 25 August with performances taking place at 12.50pm.
As the extremes of social media kick up an unsettling and unsavoury stink, we are kicking off in response in true interrogatory style to put Mark Zuckerberg and his social media colleagues ‘on trial.’ With the growth in surveillance capitalism and data swaps to make any liberal blush, the question on our lips will be who really is to blame and who is following who? So we ask you, the audience to be the jury and the National Youth Theatre company will be the disrupters. All done with a heavy helping of humour, some knitting and hard-core experts.
F. Off was developed as a workshop production at the Criterion in the West End in 2018, with 30 members of the National Youth Theatre from across the UK. F. Off now receives its world premiere at the Fringe presented by the NYT who return following the sell-out success of The Reluctant Fundamentalist at last year’s festival.
Paul Roseby OBE, CEO and Artistic Director, National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, said:
Inviting our young cast to leave social media for 24 hours in developing this show has unveiled a unhealthy over dependency on social media voyeurism and violation in equal measure. F. Off will stick a few digits up in the air and ask our post-millennials who is really to blame.