Safe Sex
Directed by David Diamond
Performed at Havana Gallery.
Feb 24-27 (no further performances)
This review of Safe Sex was written for the March 4/99 edition of the Georgia Straight. Due to space restrictions, it did not go to print. It is reprinted here with permission of the reviewer, Anne Fleming.
Having no script, and no actors, Safe Sex is a show created by
the audience. Before you run screaming away, listen to director
David Diamond: "No one will be asked to do anything they
don't want to." Relax.
Until Diamond calls for volunteers. Then giggle nervously, looking around the room. Wait. Shift in your seat.
Is that one? Yes! And another? Yes, they're sproinging up like jack-in-the-boxes now. Phew. Mop your brow. Aren't they brave? Aren't they great?
Listen to the stories they tell, amazing, true stories told charmingly, with blushes and stammers and beauty. Laugh with recognition - or maybe it's empathy - at their descriptions of a time they had to negotiate safe sex: "So I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm struggling with the condom, and..."; "I don't usually sleep with men, but there we are in the hot tub, and things are getting, you know..." Relax some more. Begin to enjoy yourself. Begin to enjoy the people around you. Contemplate getting up there yourself. Who knows? Anything could happen, right?
Well, not quite. Diamond keeps pretty close tabs, not on the what but on the how of the evening, using a technique called 'rainbow of desire'. The idea behind it is that in emotionally difficult moments, a person has a whole set - a rainbow - of fears and desires at work, and that these fears and desires can be represented by physical images, by bodily poses.
On the brave volunteers go, enacting a brief scene from one of the stories: The female character, the one fumbling with the condom, wants "hot, emotionally-rich sex." Her male partner, who can do without the emotionally-rich part, pauses to question her sexual history. "Freeze," calls Diamond. "What is a desire your character has right now? Don't say it. Show it."
Now it's your turn again. "How many people relate to this desire," Diamond asks. Hands go up. "How many could be it?" Hands go down, but a body pops up. Another brave one, hopping down to the stage and adopting the pose of the desire. And the circus of fears and desires is on as the characters work through a progressive matrix of interactions with these human manifestations of their feelings.
The result is a series of poignant moments and hilarious ones, vividly illustrating the morass of conflicting emotions that burble up around two people in bed. Interestingly, neither of our characters adopted a pose that bespoke sexual desire - although they readily admitted to feeling it when audience members offered to fill the gap with I-Want-to-JumpYour-Bones and If-You-Let-Me-I'll-Lick-You-All-Over poses.
There's a didactic intent behind the whole project that works best when Diamond doesn't point it out. Rainbow of Desire is designed to show - if we are a truly creative audience, and we are, we will see, we will notice, we will interpret on our own, without the pop psychology tour guide.
It may be a truism to say, as Diamond will with little provocation, that prepackaged entertainment- recorded music, movies, and television- has robbed us of the sense of belonging and worth that making our own entertainment once provided. But it is a whole 'nother thing to feel what we've lost, to feel the beginnings of community forming in a roomful of strangers over the course of two short hours. Even if you haven't leaped on stage - and maybe you have - you've grown fond of the people up there, and the people next to you, shouting things out. You've been part of something.
Poster by: Mirjana Galovich