The Flick

In addition to examining the convergence of race, class, and gender in workplace issues, The Flick uses its movie theater setting to examine the (often underwhelming) performance of daily life. From the production’s opening scene, the audience is presented with a mirror image of themselves, inspiring viewers to contemplate the ways their own lives are a kind of performance. The Flick’s theatrical environment also highlights the ways characters perform their projected and internalized stereotypes for one another, playing out their roles much like the actors they observe on the film screen.

Through the literal and metaphorical theater of The Flick, we are encouraged both to critically examine these performative stereotypes and to become absorbed by the characters’ biased images of one another (just as film-goers lose themselves in the drama of movies as they watch them). In the beginning of the first act, we are led to take Sam and Avery’s assumption that Rose is a lesbian at face value, then forced to confront that assumption (and what it is based on) when we learn her sexual identity is actually more fluid and complicated. We are encouraged to believe that Rose might be more financially well-off than Avery when he explains he has a full-ride to the same expensive college Rose was attending (and suggests that Rose’s parents must be paying for her school). We later learn, however, that Rose’s mother is a single parent and a low-paid secretary, and that his assumption is false. We also confront Sam’s false perception that Avery comes from a perfect familywhen we learn that his parents’ tumultuous divorce has contributed to Avery’s depression.

The Flick also examines work and social events as a kind of performance. All three characters play a professional role at their job, complete with the costume of a uniform. When Avery confesses the full extent of his depression to Rose, he explains that he almost couldn’t summon the energy to come in to work on the second day, that he had to perform an excuse (i.e., lie) to Sam about why he was late. Sam also discusses his brother’s wedding as a social “charade” (113) of happiness that does not feel real because so much labor (and denial) goes into maintaining it.

We also see each character performing within the theater in a somewhat more literal fashion. When Rose seeks to impress Avery, she performs according to her (stereotypical) imagination of what he might find desirable (as a young black man), playing a hip-hop track and dancing in a West-African-influenced style. When Avery condemns Sam and Rose for refusing to defend him against the racially-charged accusations of their new owner/manager, he performs the “black guy” stereotype embodied by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Pulp Fiction. When Sam confesses his love for Rose, she confronts him directly about the performative quality of his feelings: “Because it sort of seems like it has nothing to do with me. Like me me…Like even now. It’s like you’re performing or something” (124).

The Flick also illuminates the performative divisions between fantasy and reality, represented most poignantly by the movie screen. When Skylar touches the screen, Sam is horrified that he would disturb this sacred boundary, as it’s harder to lose one’s self in the illusion of film as real life when one’s attention is drawn to the screen.

Baker’s play highlights a state—and sensation—of arrested development that is a prevalent result of underemployment amongmillennials. Both Sam and Avery feel stuck in their current jobs as movie theater workers, living with their fathers, performing dull tasks—sweeping, mopping, cleaning up excrement—that are somewhat insulting to their obvious intelligence. Avery attempts to hide from his feelings of defeat and disappointment, burying them beneath his love of film; however, Sam quickly recognizes the feelings concealed by this love, remarking that Avery’s degree of obsession is “almost like a disability” (27). Indeed, Avery’s particular love revolves around older films and technology that is dying off in favor of digital projection. Sam recognizes that in some ways, Avery’s love prevents him from seeing new art forms as progress (and progressing himself, by extension).

Sam feels similarly weighted down by his inability to progress beyond part-time hours, frustrated that he has been turned down multiple times for promotions he rightfully earned. He seems to sense an uncomfortable similarity between himself and his brother with an intellectual disability (although, ironically, his brother’s marriage has allowed him to symbolically progress farther in his adult status than Sam). Although Avery and Sam’s current living and work situations are effectively the same, the play subtly points out the disparity in their statuses: while Avery has the option of returning to college and moving up in his career (as a young intelligent man in his mid-20s), Sam does not realistically have this option. When Avery casually asks Sam what he wants to be when he grows up, Sam dejectedly responds: “I am grown up” (42).