With gags, tunes and dance, The Family Sex Show celebrates sexual pleasure, equality and independence. What is there to be embarrassed about, asks theatre-maker Josie Dale-Jones
‘I remember the tampon dipped in Ribena,” says Josie Dale-Jones, her fingertips pressed together as if holding on to the string. “The way it swelled up immediately.” In school, Dale-Jones recalls her sex and relationships education as being “near to non-existent”. There was the purple-soaked tampon, the classic condom rolled on to a banana and the “general fear-mongering” of pictures of STIs pinned up on a board. “But never a mention of why you might want to have sex,” she says, rolling her eyes. “Never anything about empathy or pleasure, or how any of it might impact other people.”
With a team of eight performers, Dale-Jones is making a show about sex and relationships for ages five and above. Accompanied by workshops and panel talks, The Family Sex Show tackles topics including boundaries, gender, relationships and masturbation. Through a series of artistic responses and conversations, the group want to help make it easier for anyone, of any age, to talk about these sticky, tricky topics. “I don’t know another subject that we only talk about once and then we tick it off as if it’s done,” Dale-Jones says. “The learning is never over.”
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