Rachel Payne as Cleopatra for the The Living Museum of Erotic Women. Photo by 3 Fates Media.
Sex has been used to sell everything from cars and cigarettes to jeans and shoes since at least the 1800s, but in an era when pornography is freely available at the click of a button for anyone with a smartphone, do lust and desire still motivate theatre audiences to buy tickets and see shows?
‘It certainly doesn’t hurt,’ said Out Cast Theatre’s Steven Dawson.
‘A sexy eye catching poster or image makes the more shallow of us (myself included) put the brakes on and want to know more. “Okay, you’ve got my attention. Grrr. Now what?” A shirtless young man is sometimes all it takes. But that doesn’t always translate to bums on seats. Most times it still comes down to market.
‘In gay theatre in particular, Sydney audiences seem to expect it, whereas Melbourne audiences are a little more cynical. The odd thing is when I go to see a show with nudity I try to look at anything but the willy,’ said Dawson.
Circus performer Rockie Stone, who can soon be seen in Finucane & Smith’s Glory Box, is no stranger to the more risqué elements of stage life, having previously performed a routine she laughing describes as ‘something which is actually classed as kind of illegal in some places’.
‘It’s a piece that I devised some years ago when burlesque was coming to the fore…There’s a lot of blending of circus and burlesque – it makes me very uncomfortable that there’s a lot of young women who are going “Great, I’m just going to put very little clothing on and I can only do three tricks on the aerial ring; but I’m going to blend that and have very little clothing on and make that an act and put it in a burlesque club and get paid a drink card for it”. There’s a lot about that picture that really bothers me, in multiple ways,’ said Stone.
‘I think burlesque is an art form, I strongly do; there’s a place for it and I think it’s really interesting in a lot of ways, and I have contemporaries who are doing very interesting and brave and bold work with the medium. But I think there’s also a whole glorified striptease kind of thing about it all as well, which really bothers me. Are women empowering themselves or are women putting themselves in positions of objectification for very little financial reward, you know?’
Willow J. Conway is a Melbourne-based burlesque performer and teacher, whose latest production, The Living Museum of Erotic Women, is currently showing in Collingwood. An immersive promenade piece, it dramatises the lives of women through the ages, including Catherine the Great, Salome, Frida Kahlo and Khutulun, a relative of Genghis Khan.
‘I love museums; whenever I go travelling I tend to go – even though I have a theatre background – I tend to spend more time in galleries and museums than I do in theatres. Which made me go “Hmm, I think I actually like roaming around museums more than I do sitting in a theatre”. So I had the idea to combine them – to have a museum that came to life, so you’re looking at an exhibit that came to life, that breathes and lives as the exhibit would in its day,’ Conway said of the show.
With the word ‘erotic’ in its title, marketing the production has been something of a challenge.
‘Having the title has made some people really curious and some people really dubious, which has been interesting. And the audience has been so diverse. I’ve never seen such a diverse audience. If you go to MTC you kind of have an idea of what the audience will be like; if you go to a burlesque show you know what the audience will be like; if you go to a strip club… I’ve never seen such a diverse range, ranging from 18 year olds to 80 year olds. One night in particular there was a lot of older couples, 65 to 75 year old couples that walked around going “what’s this?” and “what’s that?”. Another night it was a younger, more alternative crew, then another night very mainstream – it’s been very, very diverse,’ said Conway.
Dawson, a playwright and director whose Distinguished Gentlemen (But really just a couple of ***ts) will be touring to the Edinburgh Fringe in August, agrees that successfully marketing a show about sex can be challenging.
‘Many times the themes of the play change from the very first image you’ve put out months in advance. The image and angle no longer reflects the final product. Most times you have to just run with it and try to steer the promotion in a more accurate direction. “Sorry. There is cock in my story but now it’s so much bigger than that. This has a story. Really”,’ he quips.
Successfully presenting sex and nudity on stage can be a challenge for even the most experienced director. And with a plethora of porn on the internet, clearly audiences want more than just cheap titillation on stage when they attend a production in which sex is a prominent element.
Dawson said: ‘It’s a funny thing, and I have even mocked it in my play Big Dicks On Stage. You can have garages of porn at home but you will drive 20 kilometres to see a play with a bit of real cock from a complete stranger. And usually it’s going to be a lot more underwhelming as well. Beyond the titillation it’s possibly the realness; the rawness of the body that makes our eyes dilate, but in my experience the sexy is forgotten very quickly when you give them a story that takes them on your journey. And I always promise my actors I will try and light them beautifully and make them look like gods.’
Sex definitely sells, said Stone.
‘I was just having a discussion with one of my colleagues and asking “Does sex still sell?” and I think unfortunately the answer is yes. And I wonder how much that has to do with our culture here in Australia,’ she told ArtsHub.
‘I was fascinated, when I toured my work to Edinburgh and Europe and had conversations over there with people who are in the world of circus and art, and producing and touring European circus art; I often got asked “Why do Australian circus performers always want to take their clothes off?”
‘And I thought that’s a really interesting question – I hadn’t thought about it but maybe they do. That’s really interesting, I wonder why they do? So there’s another question for you to ponder!’
The Living Museum of Erotic Women
End to End Building, Collingwood
www.livingmuseumoew.com.au
22 May – 7 June
Glory Box La Revolucion
20 August – 13 September 2015
The Melba Spiegeltent, Collingwood
www.moirafinucane.com
Distinguished Gentlemen (But really just a couple of ***ts)
An Out Cast Theatre production
Edinburgh and pre-Edinburgh seasons TBC
www.outcast.org.au
