// BBC ENTERTAINMENT & ARTS — MODA & SOCIETÀ
Why Munya Chawawa is 'jumping ship' from socials to Shakespeare
Munya Chawawa says he is on "a conscious mission" to use his phone less
Comedian, content creator and documentary maker Munya Chawawa became a star in the "golden era" of online video, but says his stage acting debut in Shakespeare is part of a move to "jump ship" from social media.
Recently, he has been immersing himself in footage of the UK's 1990s illegal rave scene.
It was a time of hedonism and freedom surrounded by political and media panic - and is the setting for a modern take on Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, in which Chawawa will appear.
"I've obviously done a super-deep dive into rave culture and watched loads of rave footage from all these little free parties where they would find an empty field," he says.
While some footage exists of those illicit outdoor parties, they came before everyone had phones and cameras - and Chawawa, 33, feels a pang of nostalgia for that age of analogue abandon.
"I absolutely miss an era where we were dancing for ourselves and not for a digital world somewhere," he says.
Munya Chawawa says he has taken rehearsals for A Midsummer Night's Dream "super seriously"
"We're all phone addicts," Chawawa continues. "The average person's picking up their phone 200 times a day. I'm on a bit of a conscious mission at the moment to reduce that.
"And interestingly, the top comments under all the videos I've been watching are people who were at those raves saying, 'I loved being able to dance, maybe get a little high, maybe get too sweaty for too long, and know there was no record of that.'"