A Sex Lesson from the Future (And Why I liked it!)

Today, we discuss the first fellowship I hosted:



This.
This is Sarah Jones, one of the most brilliant performers I have ever seen.
In it, she performs as multiple personas given life through her theatrical device: BERT.
OR
Bio-Empathic-Resonance-Technology.
B.E.R.T.

B.E.R.T.

It is brilliant.
The idea is that in the near future, human technology is able to accurately record, and then recreate the emotional response inside of the originator.
As a device, I cannot emphasize how effective this is.
Josh Daniel Palmer said it best:

"That is, quite simply, theatre."

In theatre, that is what we do.
We attempt to recreate an empathic response in our audience.
By drawing attention to this simple truth in theatre, Sarah Jones is able to create a beautiful relationship with her audience.

The Setting

The talk is set in the far distant future and our near future is being taught as a history lesson.
This setting acts as another layer of theatrical device.
It lets Sarah Jones's character of Teacher act as an "objective" third party to our very emotional history.
It lends perspective if not a sense of objective truth to it.

That was as far as we got in our discussion.
Her performance and text are so dense.
We mostly discussed that at our fellowship.
And the repercussions of those simple ideas

1. What would a future like that be like?
2. How might we achieve such a future?
3. And how long might it take?

The idea of the technology was so interesting and compelling that we didn't even get to the content

The Content

So, this is where Sarah Jones's work really shines.

She is able to slip in and out of character so quickly and so easily that it is completely transformative.

And then, she is able to appeal to many sides of the argument.

Her first character, an elderly woman views sex work as a mechanization/industrialization of the human experience of "making love"

The second is a college age feminist who finds the work empowering, but has no interest in performing it herself.

The third is a sex worker who wants the right and ability for economic empowerment.

The fourth was a sex worker from a very young age having been forced into it by her husband's debts and viewed it as a business filled with lost souls without tether.

The fifth and final one presented was a male who was getting married, attending his bachelor party, discussing freedom of choice for women who want to be in the business for positive, empowering reasons.

She indicates that her show SELL/BUY/DATE has additional roles, additional viewpoints, but already we have a wildly eclectic view of a single topic:

Sex Work.

And what does it mean?

By giving us so many perspectives and so many rich stories and encouraging us to feel empathetically with each viewpoint completely, Sarah Jones is able to weave together a very rich tapestry of views and conversations into a single whole. 

I think this work is some of the best I've seen.

I think she is one of the best performers I've seen.

I see no clear answer or way through this issue and I don't think that that is the point.

I am heartened by the historical context that she presents: 

Somehow, some way we get through this time of strife.

We come to a new understanding that is filled with rich words like "gender spectrum". 

I hope for a future where we can experience our ancestral history as a part of our growing understanding of our world.

Maybe it already exists in our theatre as exemplified by Sarah Jones. 

I hope that I may experience more theatre like it.