Katy, who was the other Annie, said to me, “Wow.

And I remember people talking about how I was the only one who had improv experience, so I should be the person who does it. What’s interesting is that Jonathan double cast the show: There were two Pauls and two Annies. Celia, how did you react when asked?Ĭelia Burnett: I thought it was a good idea.

When I met with the community engagement manager, I said, “Would you mind if we had someone flipping out screaming at your counter?” She asked what was happening, and after I explained the concept of the video she was like, “That’s awesome.” As far as approvals was concerned, that was it. And when I was in charge of putting my own show together, I really wanted to activate that connection. Jon Bremner: I was sitting at a production meeting for the show and said, “I have a good relationship with the Barnes & Noble engagement manager, and they’ve given us full access to do whatever we want for a day.” We had just done a zombie flash-mob there and it was wildly successful. But, first, here is the clip one last cockadoodie time: This past weekend, we spoke on the phone about how the shoot went down, how it first went viral, what it’s like to have people still debate whether it’s real, and exactly who was in on it. They directed me to Jon Bremner, the show’s director, who first had the idea to shoot the video, and Celia Burnett, the star of the short, who at the time was the theater’s costume designer and, unsurprisingly, one of the actresses set to play Annie Wilkes in the show. After it was posted on The Shade Room, I was so taken by the woman that I needed to hear her story.įirst, I contacted the Generic Theater in Norfolk, Virginia, whose YouTube page first posted the video to promote a run of an adaptation of Stephen King’s Misery. It’s a testament to the director, who specifically shot it to ape cell-phone videos, and the actress, who plays the part of lunatic customer so well that viewers hope and believe it’s not a performance. “ Crazy Chick Flips Out in Barnes & Noble” was shot to go viral, but even its creators cannot have expected its success: To date it has accumulated tens of millions of views across a variety of sites, each restarting the debate: The story of how a promo video filmed in 2011 by a local theater troupe for its new show ended up on The Shade Room in 2016 is the story of so many viral videos: Created with intention, it eventually finds an audience through circuitous means, slowly and increasingly obscuring the original.

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