When I saw “Electronic City”, a play by Falk Richter, I never thought that I would end up like Joy, trapped next to a cash machine, dealing with a furious crowd called customers. I never thought that while folding and unfolding clothes, I’d be thinking about her and how I should be thinking about George Clooney as well. Yes, George Clooney….

“Electronic City” has been defined as a “fairy-tale for media times”.  And isn’t my life about that anyway? When I saw “Electronic City”, I was still in my arty bubble in which criticizing is dinner  and analyzing comes as a dessert, but where you have never BEEN Joy. Now that I am her, I find it a paradox that I’m not going to the theater anymore.

While Joy thinks about Tom and George Clooney, and her life is being recorded as in a reality show where the media is everything, a mix between documentary and telenovela, I think about how many plastic bags we are using. And when I see the amount of plastic that goes to the non-recyclable trash, I rather think about George Clooney.

We all live in an electronic city; a city where everything tastes, feels and looks the same, and where a breakdown in the system can create a breakdown to the person who shows her face to the consuming mass.  In a world where love has been digitalized and where children meet their grandparents through a  web-cam, we have become a Truman show ourselves. I understood that while making a video with my 2 year-old niece. “Who am I?”, I asked her, and she said my name. “Well, give me a kiss”, I told her, but instead of kissing my cheek, she kissed the screen. For her, I am more  an image  than a real person, even when in that moment we were in the same place.

If that’s so, I should  put a picture of George Clooney  as a screen saver.