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# PREVIEW: HOTBED – A Festival of Sex
- URL: https://www.scenemag.co.uk/preview-hotbed-a-festival-of-sex/
- Published: 2017-02-24T22:59:39.000Z
- Updated: 2017-02-24T22:59:39.000Z
- Description: We live in a world saturated with sexual imagery – but how often do we talk about sex as it’s really felt, experienced or imagined? And why is theatre so seldom a part of that conversation? Hotbed is the Camden People’s Theatre’s brand new festival of sex: three weeks of adventurous performance guar
- Author: Alice Blezard
- Tags: Arts, In The South, News, Previews

## Louise Orwin | Pony Boy Curtis | Rebecca Atkinson-Lord and Greg Wohead | Lois Weaver | Beta Public | Propolis Theatre | Rachel Mars | and much, much more…

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web-600-103.jpg)

**We live in a world saturated with sexual imagery** – but how often do we talk about sex as it’s really felt, experienced or imagined? And why is theatre so seldom a part of that conversation? Hotbed is the Camden People’s Theatre’s brand new festival of sex from Tuesday April 25 – Saturday May 14: three weeks of adventurous performance guaranteed to expand your carnal knowledge. From the ubiquity of porn to the secrets of your sexual fantasies, from a celebration of sex-positivity to the difficulties of representing sex onstage, CPT’s sexual congress lays bare sex, 2017-style.

The festival is headlined by **OH YES OH NO** (April 26 – May 11), the brand-new show from **Louise Orwin**, creator of previous CPT hits *Pretty Ugly and A Girl and A Gun*. Her new show explores real sex and real bodies, trying to understand what you want and how to ask for it, in a conversation in which (almost) everyone is allowed to speak.

Legendary theatre maker – and former CPT Artistic Director – **Chris Goode** returns to Hampstead Road his ‘avante-garde performance boyband’, Ponyboy Curtis, premiering walk pause walk (May 12 – 14), a piece inspired by sources ranging from anarchist literature to skate culture to contemporary gay porn – it’s like a cross between an open rehearsal and an intimate gig, in which the boys explore the codes of masculinity, queerness and tribalism though a series of increasingly eroticised unrehearsed encounters.

![](https://www.scenemag.co.uk/content/images/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/web-600-1-10.jpg)

Other highlights of the programme include **Rebecca Atkinson-Lord** and **Greg Wohead’s** new collaboration, *Snowballing* (May 10-11), sharing their own experiences, fantasies, mistakes and hopes about sex and relationships.

Legendary performance artist **Lois Weaver** investigates the truth about sex at midlife and beyond in *What Tammy Needs to Know About Getting Old and Having Sex* (May 6).

And Propolis Theatre’s *SPILL: A Verbatim Show About Sex* (April 27 – 29) does exactly what it says on the tin. With songs.

The festival features a programme of wraparound activity. **Thomas Martin** and **Pat Ashe’s** iconic night of work at the meeting point of theatre and videogaming, *Beta Public* (May 2), returns, for a one-off orgy of all things sex and sex-positive in performance and play.

*Putting In A Good Performance: The Ethics of Presenting Sex* (May 6) is a panel discussion bringing together theatre makers and ethical pornographers to consider the implications of presenting sex for a viewing audience.

And **Rachel Mars** and friends including **Brian Lobel**, **Season Butler** and **Naomi Woddis** unite for *Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters* (May 4), a sharing of some of the most brilliant and filthy sex letters from artists such as **James Joyce**, **Frida Kahlo** and **Georgia O’Keefe**.

**For more information, [click here:](https://www.cptheatre.co.uk/production/hotbed-festival/?ref=scenemag.co.uk)**