'Where's My Dad?' TikTok Trend Spawned By Brick Theatre Group's 'Finding Nemo Jr.' Promo

BRICK, NJ — When the Brick Children's Community Theatre group published a video clip from their upcoming performance of "Finding Nemo Jr." they were just looking to promote the show.

They didn't anticipate the video posted to TikTok would become a meme.

The TikTok features Domenic Innarella, who will be playing the lead role of Nemo, singing "Where's My Dad?", after Nemo gets separated from his father, as he operates a puppet of Nemo.

The video has been dueted — shared with an overlay or additional material — with other TikTok users pairing it with things they want their dads to help them with, such as:

• "When my check engine light goes off"
• "When the mechanic tells me my car needs more than an oil change"
• "When you're at the checkout and have to pay but your dad went back for the thing he forgot so now you have to stand awkwardly with the cashier"
• "Me whenever one of these pretty lights shows up on my dashboard while I'm driving"
• "Me when I have to sign up for my own health insurance because I turned 26."

The duets and stitches are being tagged #wheresmydad.

"Some of them are so funny," said Kendra Zarrilli, president of the Brick Children's Community Theatre, which has been operating for 30 years.

The video of Innarella singing garnered 3.5 million views in the first 24 hours it was on TikTok, most as a result of the duets. It was up to more than 7 million views as of Tuesday, she said, and 1 million likes.

"My daughter has been assistant directing and during the auditions all she did was sing, 'Where's my dad,' " Zarrilli said, joking that she was so sick of it by the time auditions. But she understands why it's gotten the response.

"This generation is so smart but so inexperienced," she said, noting that her husband had to teach one of their twin daughters how to pump gas when she went to college in Florida.

Zarrilli said the theatre company only started its TikTok account a few months ago, with the director, Heather Campagno, handling the account.

Last summer, when the group was preparing to perform "Beauty and the Beast Jr.," Campagno started an Instagram account that was separate from the main BCCT account.

"I'm not a social media person at all," Zarrilli said. "She wanted to try some creative things and didn't want to mess up our main account."

One of those videos, titled "Shake my hand in character," garnered tens of thousands of views, she said. "Anything Disney and people just scoop it up."

The successes on that Instagram account — @bcct_play — and the urging of the youth actors led to Campagno creating the TikTok account a few months ago.

"The kids are who pushed her," Zarrilli said. "They help her with the content, what's trending."

"This one just took off," she said.

Domenic, who's a seventh grader at Toms River Intermediate East, is "just over the moon" with the response the video has gotten, Zarrilli said. "Everybody's so happy and happy for him. He's a great kid with a great personality."

The viral response has been a teaching moment as well.

"Heather is so good with the kids," Zarrilli said. "She had a talk with the kids about social media, and how this is what happens," including addressing how some of the comments were rude. The comments have been turned off on the BCCT TikTok, but a number of the duets and stitches — where someone shares their reaction or response side-by-side with the original video — are accepting comments.

Domenic has started his own new TikTok account, Zarrilli said, which she shared with permission from his parents: @domenic.innarella.

"He's funny. He's the kind of kid who can laugh at himself," Zarrilli said.

The BCCT also emphasizes the teamwork that goes into a show.

"A show is not a great show without the ensemble," Zarrilli said, adding that the teamwork in the case of BCCT extends to parents and alumni of the group, which is nearly all-volunteer.

"We pay the director, the set designer and the lighting designer," she said.

For example, BCCT alumnus Vincenzo Faruolo built the Nemo puppet, along with those of Marlin and Dory, as part of one of his theatre classes in college. Other alumni who have performed on Broadway come back and give their time to help out as well.

It's critical with an undertaking the size of "Finding Nemo Jr.," where the elements needed to stage it exceed the storage space the group has.

"Crush the turtle has taken the spot for my car in my garage," Zarrilli said. "And my poor dog has been looking at these fish like, 'What the heck?' "

They've only done one show that was bigger in terms of the staging, and that was "The Lion King," complete with puppets of the animals in savannah, from lions and tigers to antelope and giraffes.

The production of "Finding Nemo Jr." takes the stage at the Grunin Center for the Arts on the campus of Ocean County College on Aug. 4-6.

In addition to "Where's My Dad," the show features songs such as "Just Keep Swimming," "Fish Are Friends Not Food," and "Go With the Flow."

The performances are set for 7 p.m. Aug. 4, 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. Aug. 5, and 2 p.m. Aug. 6. Tickets are $17 for children 12 and younger and seniors, $19 for adults and children 13 and older; there is a $3 service fee per ticket charged by OCC. Tickets can be purchased online on the Grunin Center website here.