If you’ve ever fallen down the rabbit hole of those Get Ready With Me videos, or GRWM, on TikTok, Instagram or Youtube, you’re not alone. The trend has permeated every social media platform, especially TikTok, which has amassed more than 18 million posts with the #GRWM.
Celebrities, influencers and ordinary users upload clips of themselves getting ready to go somewhere or do something, and followers watch for beauty tips, envy, companionship or just amusement. The category has become so popular, it’s spawned its own parody videos.
Jennifer Kehl is one such reluctant fan. The 34-year-old actress and playwright’s one-woman show—J.E.N. (Jen’s Evolution is Nigh), which opens at the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theatre on July 6—pokes fun at not only the social media craze but also how the crass consumerism of internet culture affects the environment.
“It started with me wanting to make a climate-change piece,” Kehl says. “I really wanted to make a show that was advocating for the earth.”
Born in San Jose, Kehl graduated from UC Santa Cruz and Rose Bruford College in London, where she currently lives. She founded the Theater for Climate Change in London, which takes on ecological issues through theater performances.
“I want to make theater that is responsible and ethical,” Kehl says. “I want to use the company as a platform to make theater that’s multifaceted, but also produce work sustainably. Theater, as wonderful as it is, is one of the most unsustainable art forms ever. The company works to make theater as sustainably as possible in everything from giving an afterlife to costumes and props to not using virgin materials for sets.”
In 2023, Kehl wrote J.E.N. with friend and Minnesota theater director Rachel Ropella in the hopes of making a “carbon neutral” show and taking it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Kehl plays eight different female characters over the course of a millennium, from the Stone Age to the Apocalypse. There’s a cave woman, a medieval peasant, a Victorian maid, a 1950s housewife, a 1980s businesswoman and a “CEO of the future.” Some of the women are married, some are single. Each character has a variation of the name Jennifer, and each one has a getting-ready routine similar to a GRWM video that shows how product trends have changed throughout history.
“I’m very much a millennial,” Kehl says. “I watch GRWM videos and think they’re absolutely ridiculous. You know that’s not really how they get ready in the morning. And the way these people dress up to make their lives seem desirable in a short snippet video just tickles me. Yet they’re addicting. They’re so fascinating. But those videos are inherently quite wasteful. Do you really need a Gua Sha roller that you bought from China off of Amazon to get ready in the morning? The show shines a light on that message.”
Kehl wanted not only to spoof the frivolousness of TikToker’s putting on makeup and peddling products but also address the wastefulness involved in staging and promoting a show at the Fringe.
“There’s a lot of people,” says Kehl about the famous Scottish festival. “It’s wonderful. It’s chaotic. It’s so enormous in its scope that the way you get audience members to come see your show is on the street with flyers. And it’s not done in a manner that’s conscious of the world. There’s a lot of waste. There’s a lot of plastic. It’s toxic for the environment.”
After its run at the Fringe and in London and Romania, Kehl is bringing the show to Santa Cruz for its first U.S. date. Later, Kehl will be debuting It’s Not Just About Coffee in London, a new play about two female baristas that’s inspired by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 5,000-square foot bunker in Hawaii, which Kehl imagines includes a Starbucks.
“I just want the audience to have a really good time,” Kehl says. “The world is so scary right now in every way. This is a chance for people to sit in a beautiful theater space and escape. But if the show touches on their brain and they get into recycling more or maybe start a composting pile, any little change that’s beneficial to the world would be a success. I want them to come out with a love for this planet and appreciate that it’s a beautiful world, especially how breathtakingly magical California is.”
Jennifer Kehl performs at 3:30pm on July 6 at the Santa Cruz Actors’ Theater, 1001 Center St., Santa Cruz. Tickets: $12. santacruzactorstheatre.org.
‘I just want the audience to have a really good time. The world is so scary right now in every way. This is a chance for people to sit in a beautiful theater space and escape.’ — Jennifer Kehl
oh good for her
I think I can pass on seeing this, though