This is a website primarily for educated adults. We do review some Children’s theater for the benefit of all participants. If offended by the content below, one is cordially invited to skip this post. There are other delightful offerings on this site that will suit you better.
SUCH TIMES a SEX FESTIVAL of new work by Boston’s SEXIEST Playwrights
Presented by Heart & Dagger Productions
Audience members were invited to share their secret fantasies. They did. A lot.
The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre
949 Commonwealth Ave
Boston, MA 02215
Friday, March 1st @ 8pm – Saturday, March 9th @ 8pm
Heart & Dagger Productions Facebook Page
It should go without saying that with such a title that this production is not safe for children and prudish adults. It may lead an audience member to expect live-action porn. This was not the case. The production did not contain explicit acts of carnal engagement but the stagings were otherwise immediately revealing to all but the most innocent of eyes and ears.
Sex/lust/love is a universal motivational source and yet Western society has programmed its people to keep its legs crossed and lips closed about this taboo subject. Yes, the show is about sex; the sex we do and don’t have, the sex we wish we could have, clean sex, dirty sex, raw sex, good sex, bad sex, confusing sex, hetero and homo sex and fantasy. The vignettes presented in Such Times: A Sex Festival are about the complicated relationships surrounding one of the most coveted, least accessible acts a human faces. This production explores the rigmarole we experience trying to get into and out of our pants with humor, drama and bursts of interpretive dance.
The brief moments of nudity were relatively tasteful. They were primarily used to create effective theater and not solely for shock value. Aside from a pair of tighty-whities stuffed with what could have been a live squirrel wriggling for freedom, the element of shock was upheld mostly by words rather than an naked butt.
The performances were varied in their offerings. For example, the interpretive dancing was used with varying degrees of success. In “Under the Upper Hand,” by Mary Elizabeth Peters, dance was used to reveal the very real altercations of a physically abusive relationship. In “The Ten Steps” interpretive dance was abused as a thin metaphor for the dating “dance.”
“Playing Checkers” by Cassie M Seinuk stole the show. This chilling tale about incestuous abuse between a brother and sister was about power: the power we steal in during intimacy. Actors Melissa De Jesus and Chuong Pham were riveting as a brother and sister pushing the boundaries of childhood exploration.
Strangely, only two plays, John King’s “Redface Blue Room” and Craig Houk’s “PornSTAR,” are about the long-term consequences of fornication. The majority of the one act plays focused solely on the emotional repercussions caused by the beast with two backs. Out of an entire evening of copulation theater, STD’s and babies are only briefly discussed. At first consideration this might be considered strange but, in a country where abortion rights and comprehensive sex education are rapidly growing extinct, it isn’t. Americans are quite prudish with our Govt. sanctioned Abstinence-only sex ed. courses and damning of Janet Jackson for revealing a nipple on TV. Kids think they won’t get pregnant if they keep their shoes on and adults think that if they don’t discuss their trysts beforehand then no one will get attached. We live in a messed up time; the emotional consequences of sex are the least of our worries.
