Throughout the entertainment industry, the notion that ‘sex sells’ is one of great prominence. However, the ramifications and intimacy that the staging of sex scenes requires in theatre and Hollywood were overlooked until approximately five years ago. Dramaturgy of Sex on Stage in Contemporary Theater, edited by Kate Mulley and written by a collection of eighteen writers, aims to explore the dramaturgy of sex in contemporary theatre from the social, cultural and historical context in which the play was written. Through the lenses of many writers, the book covers a range of topics and genres from musicals to plays, verbatim theatre, fringe, and dance performances. The book magnifies power structures and exposes how they are maintained in theatre while providing a critical lens to queering and dismantling these structures onstage and off. Through examining these depictions of sex onstage from a dramaturgical, sociological and cultural perspective, the book also explores the development and rise of intimacy directors and coordinators and how the landscape of contemporary theatre has changed across the world.
A portion of Part One explores the breakdown and history of queer theatre and how plays express gay sex onstage. The book references the Broadway musical Strange Loop by Michael R. Jackson and summarizes major plot points, but also highlights a major flaw with the musical as the only depiction of homosexual sex is violent and provides a negative representation of queer intimacy. This is not just a flaw with Strange Loop; the text notes a pattern in other plays and films that continue to perpetuate queer sex as wrong and violent. The book expresses the flaws in mainstream shows and how many queer intimacy productions are absent of non-binary characters, characters with disabilities, and other marginalized communities. The author calls to the reader's attention how queer selected Broadway shows express ‘palatable’ homosexuality in order to be profitable. However, the author notes fringe theatre and how queer representation is more expansive in that medium. The text explores sexual discovery and queer theatre, and demands that future mainstage productions create a space that is reflective of authentic and non-violent queer relations.
Part Five of the book, ‘Depicting Female Desire’, is particularly fascinating. The section starts off with a chapter by Cristina (Cha) Ramos and Claire Warden called ‘Context, Cliché, and Other Considerations for Staging Female Desire’ (p. 83). This chapter is a zoom conversation between Ramos and Warden. Warden gives insightful thoughts and questions for directors who must stage intimacy. She states that directors and intimacy coordinators should offer context-based suggestions when providing actors with intimacy feedback, for example, ‘Why might this character sound like this? Maybe they are being performative in this moment, maybe they're choosing to make pornographic sounds. But let's get specific about where their sound might come from. Where is the character's lived experience and how do we tell that in the sound?’ (p. 86). Warden provides a framework for directors to give specific and character-driven feedback that will inspire authenticity in the actor.
The book does an excellent job highlighting female desire and female sexual discovery onstage, but there was an absence of depicting sexual male desire. I partially understand, as many mainstream productions are from the male gaze and, throughout history, sex has been shared through the male perspective. However, I was hoping that the book would still express the need to make sure men feel safe in the depiction of sex onstage and question the audience on how to create a sexual space from the heterosexual male perspective that dismantles hierarchy and patriarchal norms.
I would recommend this book to directors, intimacy coordinators, actors, artistic directors, educators and anyone in the development process and creation of theatre. I believe that this book is revolutionary and should be on the shelves of every university library. It provides an excellent scope of contemporary sexual theatre history and shares a lens for artists to transform the view of sex onstage in the future.
