Does anyone else feel like that life is waiting to start? I Bought a Flip Phone looks at the detrimental effect mobile phones have had on our everyday lives. Charlie (Panos Kandumas) decides if he removes himself from the screen addiction and buys a flip phone his life might be shaped into the life he imagined.

Charlie openly discusses life, love, friendship and his despair of feeling lonely and abandoned by his friends. Charlie isn’t alone with these feelings it’s just rarely discussed openly. People go back to hiding behind a screen and observing instead of living.

From the Instagram posts your friends post that show a life of frivolity and fun. People living their best lives without any issues or hang-ups! While your cruising along in a job you don’t particularly like and feeling lonely,  when will you get the same break in life? There’s a good chance their reality is very different though.

There are good points and bad points about the level of technology in our lives today. The hours of screentime “wasted” out of boredom, waiting for a text that’s more than likely never going to be sent or hoping that a life-changing notification might arrive. Instead, Charlie wants to only receive phone calls or texts to remove the lure of social media and try to meet actual people in the real world. In all honesty who can blame him?

The one thing taken away from the performance is looking at your phone habits and whether you can reduce them substantially to start living the life you have wanted to live, no matter what that is, as I can be sure it wasn’t watching a screen just in case the next notification will deliver that for you!

For more information about I Bought a Flip Phone and future productions at the Actors Pub please use the link below.

Three Stars

https://www.rotundatheatre.com/brightonfringe/iboughtaflipphone

https://www.brightonfringe.org/events/i-bought-a-flip-phone/

https://www.actors.pub/brighton-fringe