Would you like a little bit of spice with that? Five ways the Canberra Theatre Centre is heating up winter
Posted on
When a show called 44 Sex Acts in One Week is coming to Canberra Theatre Centre, you know it’s going to be good.
Add in another show called Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t and we’re already lining up to buy tickets.
Wondering what we’re talking about? Bringing a little bit of spice to our nights, Canberra Theatre Centre is heating up this winter with some boundary-pushing works thanks to Valence – a new series that’s perfect for an adults-only night out.
And from a ‘sexcom’ to an innovative work that confronts Australia’s shameful fixation with incarceration, there’s a show for every kind of taste.
Running over three months from July until September, Valence brings together five shows that highlight the best of contemporary theatre, dance, performance and what Canberra Theatre Centre describes as “works that refuse to be defined”.
Hand-picking shows that have been presented at major arts festivals both nationally and globally, alongside work that audiences and critics have not been able to stop talking about since they premiered, Valence pushes the boundaries of convention and invites viewers to confront uncomfortable truths. With a programme packed full of a range of astounding works, it promises to be a sexy, funny, electric and eye-opening chance to see some of Australia’s leading performance makers.
Igniting the sense and challenging your perceptions of the theatre, here’s everything coming to the stage with Valence…but just a warning, you might want to leave the kids at home.
44 Sex Acts in One Week
This is David Finnegan’s slippery and subversive take on a classic radio play 44 Sex Acts in One Week – and it will have you howling with laughter. Described as a ‘sexcom’, the premise is simple: Girl meets boy. Girl hates boy. Girl f**s boy 44 times. World collapses.
A bit horny and unhinged, for 80 minutes you can sit back and watch as Celina, a journalist stuck writing clickbait for a lifestyle blog, is challenged to road-test a new book, The 44 Sex Acts that Will Change your Life. All she has to do is experience 44 different kinds of sex, across the full spectrum of kink by Friday. The problem is: she needs a partner. And the only person available is her nemesis, brooding animal activist/office mail boy Alab Delusa.
Given one week to explore the endlessly undulating terrain of sex, from BDSM to role-play, from polyamory to exhibitionism (and with no time to recover), this show might just be the perfect way to heat up your winter.
Thursday 18 until Saturday 20 July | Get tickets here.
Manage Your Expectations
Eliza Sanders’ part-dance theatre, part-live improvisation, part-performative lecture Manage Your Expectations isn’t like anything you’ve seen before – so take some advice from the title and go in with no expectations at all.
Taking the idea of the ‘trigger warning’ to its absurdist extreme using humour to question how ‘informed’ consent can really be, this madcap and visceral performance uses a unique blend of dance, theatre, live film, clowning, and logic-bending philosophising to ask a very important question: ‘How much do you really want to know?’ We’ll leave that answer up to you…
Friday 2 until Sunday 4 August | Get tickets here.
Trophy Boys
A queer black comedy and drag extravaganza about power, privilege, and high school debating, this indie theatre piece is performed by a female and non-binary cast in drag as it looks at (and interrogates) insecure adolescent masculinity, entitlement and the ego of Australia’s next generation of politicians and powerbrokers.
An amazing debut play from Emmanuelle Mattana, watch as the all-boys team from the elite St Imperium college gets ready to annihilate their sister school rivals at the Grand Finale of the Year 12 Inter-school Debating Tournament. That is until the boys are locked in a classroom for their one-hour prep window and forced to argue that “feminism has failed women”. What’s that saying about ‘boys will be boys’…?
Monday 5 until Saturday 10 August | Get tickets here.
Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk]
Marrugeku Dance Company’s Jurrungu Ngan-ga [Straight Talk] is breathtaking and heartbreaking – and it’s not to be missed.
From one of our nation’s most innovative dance theatre companies, Jurrungu Ngan-ga (translated from Yawuru as ‘straight talk’) confronts Australia’s shameful fixation with incarceration, taking inspiration from the words and experiences of Yawuru leader Patrick Dodson, Kurdish-Iranian writer and former Manus Island detainee Behrouz Boochani, and Iranian-Australian scholar-activist Omid Tofighian.
Connecting the shockingly disproportionate levels of Indigenous Australians in custody and the indefinite detention of asylum seekers in Australia’s immigration detention centres, the performance blends movement, music, soundscape, spoken word and projection to draw on cultural and community experience, moving between horrific surrealism, truth-telling and stunning physicality.
Friday 23 and Saturday 24 August | Get tickets here.
Enemies of Grooviness Eat Sh!t
With a title like that, it’s hard to know what to expect. But from the mind of veteran performer and activist Emma Maye Gibson comes an eco-feminist explosion of art, politics, love, and anger as she brings her love warrior avatar Betty Grumble back to the stage. And if you don’t know who Betty Grumble is, she’s well worth Googling.
A genre-defying mix of dance, music, poetry, clowning, drag, aerobics, and cabaret, at the heart of this non-linear manifesto is a response to intimate partner violence and the ritualised healing of collective wounds to reclaim body, pleasure, and joy. Described as poetry, a tribute, a rock n roll performance art collision, a love scene and revenge fantasy all in one, expect an unapologetic show that has everything your mum warned you about: full frontal nudity, loud music and sex scenes.
Wednesday 4 until Saturday 7 September | Get tickets here.
Feature image: Brett Boardman.
