In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

• TikTok Is Theatre, Theatre Is TikTok
• Trevor Boffone (bio)

I didn't expect to become a meme.¹ But that's exactly where I found myself in spring 2019. I was scrolling through Instagram when I saw a video of two of my high school students and I dancing to "Fiesty" by Zachty with the text "get you a teacher like this" plastered across the top. Suddenly, what had begun as a private ritual in which my students and I shared space together, making dancing videos on short-form video apps such as TikTok, soon became something incredibly public-facing. The meme was posted on popular Instagram meme pages and subsequently circulated on thousands of Instagram stories. And, at every turn, Instagrammers tagged me in the post, drawing my eye back to this video of two Black teen twins, Takia and Talia, and me, a white and nerdy high school teacher, dancing as my ID lanyard swings back and forth. Later, curiosity got the cat and I went to Facebook. I searched "dancing teacher" and, to my surprise, the meme had been shared thousands of times on Facebook. Through a series of TikTok, Dubsmash, and Triller videos, my high school students and I went viral repeatedly throughout the spring 2019 semester, performing complicated and quick-fire dance routines and silly nonsensical videos that ultimately led to national media appearances on Good Morning America, Inside Edition, Access Hollywood, Localish, and the like. As my teaching became the subject of public attention and my classroom was memed time and time again, I thought to myself: this is theatre. And, as a theatre scholar, I began to question: What is the relationship between TikTok and theatre? And, how is TikTok a theatrical space?²

When TikTok launched in the United States in August 2018, it became synonymous with Gen Z. Zoomers flocked to the site to create a generational sense of identity, engaging with the app's silly and DIY aesthetics in the process. By [End Page 41] the time much of the United States was at home social distancing in the spring of 2020, TikTok had fully transitioned from a space dominated by teenagers into a digital playground for all generations. The app became the most downloaded iPhone and Android app of 2020 and, in the process, became ground zero for theatrical experimentation. The range of material included TikTok creators hitting dance challenges and filming short cooking tutorials; professional artists singing; and even a cohort of musical theatre composers crowdsourcing a new musical. As TikTok's presence in US popular culture at large grew, so too did the app's influence on theatre itself. That is, TikTok experiments such as the much-publicized Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical marked a shift in how theatremakers and audiences at large viewed the legitimacy of TikTok and how the platform intercepted theatre's perception of the digital.

For many avid TikTokers, however, the power of TikTok as a site of performance-making was no secret. Although TikTok was not available in the United States until August 2018,³ the platform quickly became one of the most downloaded social media applications of the 2010s and the most downloaded app in 2020, outpacing mainstays such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.⁴ From its onset, TikTok has been an inherently theatrical space, one that encourages us to reexamine the very ethics and craft of performance. TikTok makes performance in ways that have implications for theatre production, theatre history, and dramaturgy. TikTok, I argue, challenges us to reframe and rethink our ways of understanding performance, accessibility, self-determination, and embodiment. My work here is not invested in unraveling the influences of TikTok on theatre itself. Rather, I am invested in unpacking how TikTok itself is theatre, a phenomenon that effectively blurs the lines between live performance, embodiedness, theatricality, and digital culture.

TikTok Is Everywhere

Whether TikTok features teenagers re-creating dance challenges, musical theatre stars belting in their bathrooms, Black creators documenting the George Floyd protests, or K-Pop fans trolling Donald Trump, TikTok is a performance space.⁵ In Theatre and Social Media, Patrick Lonergan proposes that viewing social media through a performance lens encourages "new ways of...

中文翻译：

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TikTok 就是剧院，剧院就是 TikTok

代替摘要，这里是内容的简短摘录：

• TikTok 就是剧院，剧院就是 TikTok
• 特雷弗·博丰（生平）

我没想到会成为模因。^1个但这正是我在 2019 年春天发现自己的地方。当我看到我的两个高中生的视频时，我正在浏览 Instagram，我随着 Zachty 的“Fiesty”跳舞，上面贴着文字“让你成为这样的老师”顶端。突然之间，我的学生和我一起共享空间，在 TikTok 等短视频应用程序上制作舞蹈视频的私人仪式很快就变成了令人难以置信的面向公众的活动。该模因发布在流行的 Instagram 模因页面上，随后在数千个 Instagram 故事中传播。而且，每一次，Instagram 用户都会在帖子中标记我，让我回想起这段视频，视频中有两个黑人青少年双胞胎 Takia 和 Talia，还有我，一个白人书呆子高中老师，在我的身份证挂绳来回摆动时跳舞. 之后，好奇心得到了猫，我去了 Facebook。我搜索了“舞蹈老师”，令我惊讶的是，这个模因在 Facebook 上被分享了数千次。通过一系列 TikTok、Dubsmash 和 Triller 视频，我和我的高中生在整个 2019 年春季学期反复传播病毒，表演复杂而快速的舞蹈动作和愚蠢无意义的视频，最终导致全国媒体出现在早安美国、Inside Edition、Access Hollywood、Localish等。当我的教学成为公众关注的话题，我的课堂一次又一次地被记住时，我心想：这就是戏剧。而且，作为一名戏剧学者，我开始质疑：TikTok 和戏剧之间有什么关系？而且，TikTok 如何成为一个戏剧空间？^2个

当 TikTok 于 2018 年 8 月在美国推出时，它成为了 Z 世代的代名词。Zoomers 蜂拥而至该网站以创造一种代际认同感，并在此过程中融入该应用程序的愚蠢和 DIY 美学。By [结束第41页]2020 年春天，当美国大部分人都在家中保持社交距离时，TikTok 已经完全从一个由青少年主导的空间转变为适合所有世代的数字游乐场。该应用程序成为 2020 年下载次数最多的 iPhone 和 Android 应用程序，并在此过程中成为戏剧实验的归零地。材料范围包括 TikTok 创作者挑战舞蹈和拍摄简短的烹饪教程；专业艺人演唱；甚至一群音乐剧作曲家众包一部新音乐剧。随着 TikTok 在美国流行文化中的影响力越来越大，该应用程序对戏剧本身的影响也越来越大。也就是说，TikTok 实验，例如广为宣传的料理鼠王：TikTok 音乐剧标志着剧院制作人和广大观众如何看待 TikTok 的合法性以及该平台如何拦截剧院对数字的看法的转变。

然而，对于许多狂热的 TikTok 用户来说，TikTok 作为表演网站的力量已经不是什么秘密了。尽管 TikTok 直到 2018 年 8 月才在美国上市，³但该平台迅速成为 2010 年代下载次数最多的社交媒体应用程序之一，并在 2020 年成为下载次数最多的应用程序，超过了 Facebook、Instagram、Twitter 和 YouTube 等主流应用程序。^4个从一开始，TikTok 就是一个天生的戏剧空间，它鼓励我们重新审视表演的道德和技巧。TikTok 的表演方式对戏剧制作、戏剧史和戏剧艺术都有影响。我认为，TikTok 挑战我们重新构建和重新思考我们理解性能、可访问性、自我决定和体现的方式。我在这里的工作并不是致力于揭示 TikTok 对戏剧本身的影响。相反，我致力于揭开 TikTok 本身的戏剧性，这种现象有效地模糊了现场表演、体现性、戏剧性和数字文化之间的界限。

TikTok无处不在

无论 TikTok 的特色是青少年重新创造舞蹈挑战、音乐剧明星在他们的浴室里狂欢、黑人创作者记录乔治·弗洛伊德的抗议活动，还是 K-Pop 粉丝嘲讽唐纳德·特朗普，TikTok 都是一个表演空间。⁵在Theatre and Social Media中，帕特里克·洛纳根 (Patrick Lonergan) 提出，通过表演镜头观看社交媒体会鼓励“……的新方式”