Be quick! The show finishes tomorrow – grab £10 tickets using the code DIVA10
BY ELEANOR NOYCE, IMAGE BY SOHO THEATRE
Award-winning theatre maker Rachel Mars’s new show, Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters, begins with a filthy letter from writer James Joyce to his wife Nora Barnacle. It’s striking from the beginning, comprising a detailed history of sexting using dirty letters from the likes of Frida Kahlo, Eleanor Roosevelt, Georgia O’Keefe and Radclyffe Hall. Apparently, us lot have been composing dirty messages for longer than we thought.
Running from Tuesday 14 June to Saturday 18 June at Soho Theatre, this is a quick run. Get in there whilst you still can! Working alongside friends and sexologists alike, Rachel has unearthed a brief history of filthy letters dating back centuries. Set to the soundtrack of lusty anthems Make Me Feel by Janelle Monae and Push It by Salt-N-Pepa, the set gets more intense as it progresses. The first letters are set to silence, with these tracks introduced as the content gets saucier. It’s intense, and fabulous.
Between Rachel’s readings, modern-day sexts fill the screen. My personal favourite was “I want to fuck you rabid”, with the sendee quickly coming back with “Rachel! I meant Rachel!”. Filled with brief pauses as the audience collectively read these visuals, the moment we all realised the hilarity of its content was atmospheric.
All in all, this was a triumph. Narrating what it means to write dirty letters and how we construct them, who they’re written for, and how we represent ourselves, Your Sexts Are Shit is a necessity. Drawing on her own experiences of bisexuality, sprinkling in queer narratives from Frida Kahlo, Radclyffe Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt and more, this show details the lust not just of straight, cis couples – aka James Joyce and his obsession with Nora’s bum – but of WLW passion. The letters Eleanor sent to her girlfriend, journalist Lorena Hickok – who actually moved into the White House under the premise of journalistic necessity – were classically sapphic in content, more lusty than sexual.
If you’d like to grab £10 tickets, use the code DIVA10 to access this discount on all performances. There are only two left – don’t miss it. The performance will be BSL interpreted by Sue MacLaine on Friday 17 June at 7:30pm. Tickets start from £14.50 and are available via the Soho Theatre website at sohotheatre.com. To keep up with Soho Theatre, follow them on Twitter and Instagram.
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