Hotbed is CPT’s brand new festival of sex: 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 (26 Apr – 11 May), 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.
Former CPT Artistic Director – Chris Goode returns to Hampstead Road his ‘avante-garde performance boyband’, Ponyboy Curtis, premiering walk pause walk (12 – 14 May), a piece inspired by sources ranging from anarchist literature to skate culture to contemporary gay porn.
The festival features a programme of wraparound activity. Thomas Martin & Pat Ashe’s iconic night of work at the meeting point of theatre and videogaming, Beta Public (2 May), 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 (6 May) 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 (4 May), a sharing of some of the most brilliant and filthy sex letters from artists such as James Joyce, Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keefe.
