It seems like you can go to any neighborhood on any night and find women with tassels on their tits. The burlesque boom is everywhere, from fancy venues (like the Triple Door) to clubs (like the Heavens) to theaters (like the Rendezvous) to restaurants (like the Pink Door). While regional and fringe theaters fret about shrinking audiences and failing finances, the tassel-twirling phenomenon seems to prove that the only thing left to reinvigorate live theater is the universal reinvigorator: sex.
So it makes sense that Tim Murray, board member of the Wet Spot ("a sex-positive community center") and first-time theater producer (of Barely Legal, "a sex-positive play") is helping to build a new ("sex-positive") theater in a not-even-remotely-central location and is confident it will succeed. Barely Legal, which just closed at Spitfire, turned a profit with minimal advertising or press attention. Now Murray is working on renovations for a 40-seat theater adjacent to the Wet Spot—an unobtrusive pale-blue cinderblock building on 15th Avenue West, just up the road from the Utilikilt factory and across the street from a hand-painted sign advertising ladybugs. ("5¢ each or $5 per 100. They are amazingly beneficial, fun and educational for children, AND they are good luck!")
One afternoon, walking through the vacant building, with its couches, tables, and giant painting of a phallus, Murray insisted that the Wet Spot is not a sex club, although it does host swinger, bondage, and other "play" parties. "People also come to socialize—on Wednesday they play cards." The Wet Spot is expanding into the building next door, which will house, among other things, a theater for artists who "want to write edgier things." Like what? "Nudity, BDSM—you could write a hardcore rape scene, where at the end she takes the rapist's mask off and says 'Honey, that was so great!'" Would he consider producing full-penetration sex on stage? "Maybe," he said. "I'd like to see sex be just another part of the show. A friend of mine says it's like the queers—they started as the villain, then became the butt of the joke, then the hero, now they're just part of the story."
Murray says the time for sex-positive theater is now. "Our director, Allena [Gabosch], says we're in the middle of a sexual renaissance; I mean, I work at a Fortune 500 company and am out as poly and queer. That's great."
That is great—for people. But the sex-positive (and cash-flow-positive) renaissance will only be great for theater if the art isn't enslaved by the sex. According to the sex-positivists, humping should be as shameless a part of everyday life as, say, drinking water. Let's assume they're right. Now you've got people who want to do plays about drinking water. They're going to open a small theater so they can do water-drinking plays. There are good plays that include water drinking but making water drinking the raison d'être for the theater is putting the cart before the horse. Or the orgasm before the kiss. Or whatever.
