‘The Maids’ Gets a Social Media Makeover at BAM, But the Message Gets Lost in the Scroll

On Wednesday night, the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Harvey Theater was awash in glowing screens and selfie flashes as Jean Genet’s classic ‘The Maids’ returned to the stage—this time, filtered through the lens of Instagram and TikTok. Director Kip Williams, known for his multimedia provocations in Sydney, brings a digital fever-dream to New York, starring Yerin Ha and a flurry of on-stage iPhones.

The premise is tantalizing: Genet’s tale of two servants plotting against their employer, reframed as a commentary on digital performance and self-surveillance. The actors livestream their every movement, their faces projected high above the stage as if in a never-ending story. The result is a chaotic swirl of camera feeds, split screens, and viral posturing, more familiar to the Gen Z crowd than to the city’s traditional theatergoers.

But beneath the shimmer of ring lights and glitchy video, something essential feels missing. The play’s original psychosexual tension—its knife-edge intimacy and class resentment—gets flattened by the omnipresent tech. The audience on Wednesday seemed divided: some snapped surreptitious photos, others sighed in frustration as the characters’ emotional stakes drowned in digital noise.

This new ‘Maids’ is undeniably of its moment, arriving just as New Yorkers debate the city’s real boundaries between public and private, performance and reality. Yet for all its surface ruckus, the production struggles to offer more than a familiar warning: too much screen-time is, well, too much. As the spring arts season heats up and festival crowds spill onto Brooklyn’s streets, it’s a timely question—one this show raises, but never truly answers.