Student Blog: The Influencer Effect

We are all influencers. Crazy, right? We grew up watching our favorite idols, and now we’re slowly becoming our own, not as a title, but as a condition of the field. Influence isn’t something you step into anymore. It’s something you participate in the moment your work becomes visible beyond the room. And that visibility no longer waits. It happens alongside the process. Writers, directors, producers, performers, designers, everyone contributes to how something is perceived simply by being part of it. Not because they’re trying to shape an audience, but because the system now absorbs and reflects whatever is shared. What used to feel like a role has discreetly become an expectation built into the way the field operates.

In the performing arts, that shift is difficult to separate from the work itself. There’s an expectation to stay visible, to share what you’re working on, to build something that extends beyond the room. And there is real value in that. Visibility can create access. For me, especially being based outside of New York City, it has made a real difference. It has made certain rooms feel closer, certain conversations more reachable, placing me in spaces that might have otherwise felt out of reach. When it aligns, it doesn’t feel artificial. It can feel like a continuation of the work, not just presenting something, but shaping how it is received before it’s fully experienced. In that sense, visibility doesn’t just sit alongside the work anymore, it begins to function as part of it.

Because of that, the process no longer stays contained. Parts of it move outward while it’s still developing, and not all parts move equally. What tends to travel are the moments that make sense quickly, the ones that hold on their own. Over time, those moments begin to define the work publicly, even if they only reflect a fraction of it. And while the people inside the process understand that difference, the audience doesn’t experience that distinction. They respond to what is visible, and what's visible starts to feel like the whole story. Instead of forming a relationship to a work through experience, people form it through recognition. They’ve seen something before they’ve encountered it, and that recognition becomes the frame through which everything else is received.

From a marketing standpoint, this follows a very clear pattern. Attention builds through repetition. What feels like interest is often just familiarity that has settled in over time. The more something is seen, the less effort it takes to engage with. It begins to feel accessible, not because it has been explained, but because it no longer feels unfamiliar. What used to be a deliberate strategy has now become part of the environment itself. Platforms intensify this by rewarding what can function independently, what can be understood quickly and without context. Over time, that doesn’t just shape what is shared, it shapes what is noticed. Not necessarily what is most meaningful, but what translates most easily, and what translates most easily is what begins to carry the most weight.

Theatre, by contrast, depends on a different set of conditions. It relies on time, trust, curiosity, exploration, consistency, discipline, responsiveness, a clear central vision, and the list goes on. Meaning is not contained in a single moment. It develops through how moments relate to each other. When something is pulled out and shared on its own, it becomes something else, not incorrect, but incomplete. And in some ways, that incompleteness can misrepresent what the work is actually doing. Yet those fragments are often the first point of contact, and those early impressions don’t disappear. They stay with the work, shaping how it is understood before it is fully experienced.

At the same time, stepping away from visibility doesn’t feel neutral either. If nothing is shared, it can appear as though nothing is happening, even when the work is ongoing and substantial. Visibility becomes a signal, not of depth, but of presence. So people remain within it, not necessarily to influence, but to stay part of the conversation, to avoid disappearing. And over time, that need to remain seen becomes something more personal. People stay visible to be remembered. As a society, most of us hope to leave something behind, to create a sense that we were here and that what we did mattered beyond the moment we experienced it. Influence starts to feel like proof of that, even if it’s only surface-level. A record that something happened, that effort was real, that we contributed. And slowly, that proof becomes something we feel responsible for maintaining.

It doesn’t stop at the work. It extends into how we live alongside it. We’re not just sharing outcomes, we’re sharing process, routine, effort, even moments that used to exist without an audience. Daily life, and even private life, begins to feel like it belongs to the same system. Constant visibility, constant stimulation. And over time, that visibility becomes tied to validation in a way that’s hard to ignore, like if it isn’t shared, it didn’t fully count. What used to feel complete on its own can start to feel unfinished until it’s been made apparent. And yet, underneath that, there is something real. People want to contribute. They want to play a role in what comes next. They want to leave something behind that someone else can follow and sharing becomes a way to extend that impact. However, the same act that builds connection can become overexposure. The same instinct to share can become a habit of proving. And at a certain point, it becomes harder to tell whether something is being expressed or confirmed, whether it’s about the work or about showing that the work exists.

That’s what sits underneath all of this. Not just that we are all influencing, but that we are all, in some way, accounting for ourselves in real time. Showing that we’re working, that we’re progressing, that we’re in it. Leaving behind small, visible markers of effort. That’s the effect. Not that people are trying to be influencers, but that influence has become unavoidable. That the work is being seen before it’s understood, and recognized before it’s ever experienced. Somewhere in that shift, the line between making something and presenting it has started to blur. And once that line blurs, it doesn’t just change the work. It changes us. If everything is being shared as it happens, then we are no longer just living the experience, we are living it with an awareness that it might be seen, remembered, interpreted. And over time, that awareness becomes part of the experience itself.

When everything is made visible, what remains ours?