Newcastle Upon Tyne
14th November 2014
Miranda Sings is a parody character created by Colleen Ballinger in 2008, when she first started posting videos on a YouTube channel (MirandaSings). The videos posted on the said channel are mostly ‘tutorials,’ off key music videos as well as various challenges. Said YouTube channel now has over 2.5 million subscribers and Coleen has also been performing live as the character regularly since 2009.
I really enjoyed this show because we not only got to see Miranda perform but also the person behind the character. Coleen not only started the show as herself but quite incredibly transformed herself into Miranda mid-way through a version of Wicked’s Defying Gravity. I thought this was a really nice touch to the show because it’s different being a ‘Mirfanda’ and not being able to see the creator of the character you so admire. Most of the time even if we know who is behind the content which is released to us, be it online, in book, on TV, it’s hard to really picture how it all happens. But right then and there we all got to see Colleen change and as soon as the lipstick appeared Miranda took over.
Right from the start we were encouraged to use our phone and tweet with #MirandaSingsNewcastle, which personally is not something I expect when I go to the theatre. I thought that it made the show more permanent and I also felt like it was a good way to highlight that social media does play a very large part in our everyday lives. This is also true when it comes to entertainment, especially since it is through the internet that Miranda’s character is now known globally.
Because social media plays such a large part in the success of Vloggers such as Miranda, there is always engagement of the performer with the audience and this continued in the live performance as well as the meet and greet afterward. The show was split into topics within which ‘Miranda’ invited members of the audience on stage to improvise with her, making her fans feel very much included in the performance and able to connect with the character because they were actually able to approach her. It also makes every performance unique as it is uncertain who will come up on stage.
Overall, I think that it was a great show; it was funny, inventive and frankly quite ridiculous. I would also like to say that the live show is definitely worth seeing, if only for the spontaneity and hilariousness of it.
