During Fringe World this year, Bron Batten will go on actual first dates – live onstage. Featuring a different volunteer participant each night, Onstage Dating is going to be a show like no other! Today Bron joins us for a guest post about her internet dating experiences.
Bron Batten in Onstage Dating, photo by Theresa Harrison Photography.
There are three basic stages to an internet date.
First is the initial pinprick of excitement when you lock eyes with their online profile. Their picture doesn’t disgust me you think. I can imagine having a conversation/making out with their face you muse further. I like that dog/bird/jungle cat they’re posing with, etcetera etcetera. You know, those classic romantic feelings of the twenty first century.
Second is the nerve-wracking online chat. Oh no, did that statement make me seem like a dumb dumb? Why are they taking so long to get back to me? Why are they responding so quickly? Why haven’t they written back at all? Does this mean I’m going to die old and alone amongst piles of my own human refuse and internet shopping purchases used to ward off the crushing loneliness and existential despair?
And thirdly, if things progress to this stage, there’s the meeting in 3D. That is, the elusive real-life catch up. The nerve-wracking movie, the awkward coffee or the sweaty drink. This is a rare but not unheard of occurrence and a chance to see if those cyber pheromones match up with their flesh and blood cousins. It’s the only way to tell if you do in fact, want to make out with their face.
It’s all such a tender and hopeful endeavour, a brave punt taken on the genetic lottery. After all, what are the chances that this collection of pixels on the lap-top screen could be your soul mate?
Slim. Very very very slim.
And take it from me dear reader, for I am the world-weary voice of experience. In the 12 months preceding the debut of my Perth Fringe World show Onstage Dating, I went on over 50 internet dates. That’s an average of about one a week. And they ranged from the sublime to the truly horrific.
I started my research in Europe whilst I was in residence there (it’s no big deal guys!) in locations ranging from Paris to Morocco and from London to Lithuania. Therefore I can say with absolute certainty that it is just… bleak all over.
Yup. It’s really, really grim.
Nowm at times the research was a little more, how can I put this? Hands on… than at other times? But what can I say? I’m deeply committed to the pursuit of art. And plus now my bikini waxes are tax deductible.
For example, I met a Nigerian man from Canada in Lithuania who smelled like Berocca and over dinner he applied no less than 4 different types of skin ointment before leaving without so much as a ‘thanks, see you later’. I met a very handsome Portuguese man in Paris whose opening line was about how he had irritable bowel syndrome and I met a man in London who was quite possibly on cocaine the entire time.
He was a self-proclaimed ‘Reiki Master’ who chain smoked cigarettes but didn’t drink alcohol because it pollutes the body’s energy channels. It got to the point where I was stabbing myself in the leg with my own fingernails every time he opened his mouth, just so I could distract myself from what he was saying and focus on the pain instead, which was infinitely more pleasant. Eventually I thought someone was going to jump out with a video camera and say it was all a joke and that he was an actor trained especially in repelling women.
Except that it wasn’t. It was my life.
And now I’m repeating this process on stage. With strangers. In front of other strangers. And why on earth would anyone in their right mind want to do this I hear you ask? Well that’s an excellent question!
We predominately conduct our modern dating lives online. OK Cupid, Grindr, Tinder – love’s tender and intimate course has gone public like never before. Internet dating profiles chart our hopes and dreams for that perfect significant other: laid bare online for anonymous audiences to trawl or troll as they will. Face value has become our only value.
Onstage Dating takes this public display one step further – by placing it live onstage! By exploring this strange online dating world in real life, Onstage Dating is a funny, tender, awkward and intimate performance experience that takes the conventions of a traditional first date and gleefully turns them upside down.
If you’ve ever been on a terrible online date or indeed achieved that elusive fairy tale ending then this is the show for you. Come along and go on a date with me- and who knows? We may even be soul mates! Bron
Witness the vulnerability, thrills and heartbreak of the dating experience up close, as Bron Batten facilitates, interrogates, deconstructs and gleefully destroys the rituals of contemporary romance in Onstage Dating from 20-25 January at 7:30pm nightly. Head here for tickets.