“Places, Please” is a web-series that follows three best friends, Jack, Fitz and Emmie through their hilarious trials and tribulations as out of work actors in the New York City independent arts scene. The show’s title is not only a play on the famous stage and movie direction, but also an allusion to the station in life of the characters. In their early thirties, the main characters know they want to be paid working actors, however they have no discernible clue how to achieve success and financial stability.
Each main character represents an allegory to the various ways in which aspiring actors try to sustain themselves while waiting for their breakthrough. Emmie, the beautiful, practical and slightly naïve country girl, has a dependable corporate 9 to 5 job and a sensible safe view towards achieving her dreams. Fitz is the opposite of Emmie. Chasing windmills and disdaining responsibilities, Fitz has embraced the mirage of the all or nothing bohemian arts lifestyle. Caught between the two outlooks, Jack desperately wants to write and act all day, yet feels the burden of growing up, attempting a normal life, and paying rent.
While the show primarily focuses on the three friends, numerous other recurring characters inhabit their world. These secondary characters appear intermittently to complement storylines, highlighting how small the off-Broadway theater world is. People float in and out of each other’s lives consistently enough to make the scene feel like a high school community, for better or worse.
The humor of “Places, Please” is derived from skewering the absurdity of the self-involved modern NYC cultural environment. Attempting to further their dreams, the characters desperately, willingly and earnestly throw themselves into ludicrous situations fraught with highly neurotic people. The first season covers topics such as making no budget independent films, the horror of acting in showcases, unfunny improvisation groups, humiliating acting classes, and the struggle of acting in and producing off Broadway shows. Other seasons will cover topics such as random jobs, video competitions, participating in bad advertising campaigns, auditioning for game shows and other acts of blatant self promotion, all while attempting to prove self worth to family and friends.
The show is presented in a pseudo-documentary single hand-held camera format, which allows the show to seamlessly integrate a low budget aesthetic. Akin to postmodern television, “Places, Please” is highly intertextual and reflexive. As the show progresses, characters and plots from past episodes are frequently referenced or expanded. Numerous running jokes and themes develop throughout the series pulling from a serpentine mix of ideas such as rivalries, sexual incompatibilities, personal identity crises, adolescent trauma, aging, pride, miscommunication, lying, guilt, subterfuge, determination, manipulation, and social status anxieties.
