How Kip Williams Remade ‘Dorian Gray’ for the TikTok Generation

Few people likely associate Oscar Wilde’s famed 1890 novella The Picture of Dorian Gray with the tech-laden, scroll-heavy social media of the 21st century. But for Tony-nominated director Kip Williams, this landmark work of queer literature and the fast-paced digital landscape of TikTok are a perfect fit — and the sheer will it takes to bring them together onstage is the entire point of his new Broadway show.

Wilde’s story follows the young, wealthy, and beautiful Dorian Gray. After having a portrait done by the talented painter Basil, Dorian longs for the picture to age and wither instead of him. When an unknown force grants his wish, Dorian’s subsequent life of hedonism and vice shifts from one of pleasure to abject horror. Williams’ production stars Succession Emmy winner Sarah Snook as all 26 characters who take the stage during the two-hour, no-intermission, play. But the production hinges on the help of a camera crew streaming live to a giant screen in the middle of the stage. Onstage, the group follows Snook around, sometimes with set cameras on tripods, other times with full-body steady cams, and even sometimes with an iPhone. But while audiences who follow the actress might see her directing a complicated ballet of camera shots, wigs, props, accents, and costumes, giant portrait-oriented screens in the middle of the stage fill in the black background behind her. See a camera operator following Snook to a desolate corner? On the screen she’s actually at an elaborate dinner party. Snook walks offstage under the gaze of an iPhone? She’s actually Dorian descending into an all night rave — complete with Snapchat and TikTok filters distorting her appearance. 

It’s a story of age-old theater for a modern era, a careful balancing act that Williams tells Rolling Stone he wanted to bring to the stage by highlighting just how intertwined performance has become with our digital lives. 

“The advent of the smartphone and its prolific presence within our lives [means] you are being watched at every single moment of your life. That human experience of artifice, that’s not new. But the mobile phone means we’re performing increasingly in an abstract space — where there is less vulnerability, less nuance, less complexity, and, by extension, a greater propensity to a highly curated narrative about who we are, which seduces one’s ego,” Williams says. “The kind of moral crisis that Wilde explores within this play is that humans have a right to self-actualize, to explore their sense of self, pleasure, desire to the fullest. But when ego becomes unchecked without consequence, what happens to us? Who do we become?”

Growing up in Australia, Williams was first introduced to Wilde’s body of work in high school, where he played wealthy debutante Cecily Cardew in a production of The Importance of Being Earnest. So when it came time to make his version of Dorian Gray, he tells Rolling Stone that the stakes in making the play felt high not only because of how famous the work is, but because he had a personal connection. “Wilde, as a queer thinker, is so acutely aware of the way in which people are performing ideas of self, particularly around gender and sexuality,” Williams says. “So I was gifted this incredible entry point into his writing as a young person. It was a big part of my own queer awakening to encounter his work.”

The difficult source material

Dorian Gray is historically a bitch of show to do in any form. There’s a madman running around the streets of London, drinking and clubbing and fucking to his heart’s content, and a bucketful of English aristocrats to represent the various vices that can lead a person to ruin. Add in the weighty moral questions about which self you let people see — and whether that deception can change who you are — and it’s understandable why it presents many dramaturgical challenges. But having Snook as the voice behind all 26 characters is about more than giving her the right lines. Snook also has to interact with prerecorded versions of herself placed in various screens on stage, or hit marks that are filmed from an iPhone in her hand. At times she even breaks the fourth wall to talk directly with the audience. “That relationship with the audience is central to how this piece works. It’s a metaphor for the way Dorian feels watched by his society and watched by his portrait,” Williams says. It’s an onerous job — and one Snook gets right with incredible skill and awe-inspiring prowess, something Williams still can’t get over. 

“It is without a doubt the most complex piece of theater that I’ve ever directed. But working with Sarah has been one of the greatest artistic experiences of my life,” Williams says. “My brain is in denial that Sarah won’t be performing this for the next 60 years of her life. There’s a really great Dorian Gray irony at the idea, with the pre-recorded footage, that she could be 80 and performing this piece opposite her 36-year-old self. But you know, Sarah might have other ideas about that.” 

A modern portrait mode

In Williams’ show, Snook and the giant screen in front of the audience paints an inescapable picture. The cellphone camera has become both the tool humans use to perform and the reason that performance distorts even further in the eyes of others. But while Williams says he’s aware at how acutely the show points out the problem of unchecked ego — he says audience members might not recognize when the play also shows its solution. 

“Having the whole crew on stage every night says to the audience, almost unconsciously, here is an antidote,” Williams says, describing how Snook bows hand in hand with her camera operators at the end of every show. “This is an ensemble who has come together live for you in this room and have worked so collaboratively and beautifully with one another to support Sarah’s virtuoso performance. And I am incredibly moved by the curtain call at the end of each show because you suddenly sucked away from the individual, the story of unchecked ego, and back into community.”

The world has changed significantly since The Picture of Dorian was first published in 1890. It’s also changed in the short time since Williams first staged this play in November 2020. In fact, it feels almost like a guarantee that the world will change again by the time Williams and his entire team — which includes his sister Clemence as the composer and sound designer — attend the 78th Tonys in June, where they’re up for six awards, including Best Direction of a Play. But for Williams, the idea that what humans are using to perform could change is what highlights just how strong Wilde’s original work is. 

“The portrait framing of the screens is purposeful. It’s about portraiture. We’re living in a time where we’re taking video portraits of ourselves all the time. And Tik Tok is the kind of central canvas of 2025,” he says. “It’s a story that’s speaking to the now. And it’s a credit to the prophetic quality of Wilde to have written a story 135 years ago that can do that.” 

When asked if Wilde would appreciate the characterization — and perhaps be tempted to join the app himself — Williams smiles. “I think he’d be the absolute doyen.”