What Is Sexy? has the dubious distinction of being the only play (that I know of) with its own safe word. "There are some improvisational sections," said director Marc Kenison, "and we wanted a safe word just in case things got weird." An actor proposed the safety during a rehearsal. "That scene is still in the play, so I'd rather not say what it is," Kenison said. "But it has to do with fetish and humiliation and the embodiment of an animal." And the safe word? "Unfortunately, I cannot reveal it." (Earlier, another company member told me the safe word was, in fact, "safe word.")

On paper, What Is Sexy? sounds like a disaster: An "ensemble-generated" show, based on "community interviews" about what we consider sexy. But Wonderful Life, an earlier Washington Ensemble Theatre project, sounded even worse—an ensemble-generated show, based on community interviews, about "the moments, memories, and madness" of the holiday season—and miraculously, WET pulled it off. (Wonderful Life smartly used the holidays as an entry point into ordinary characters, from a lonely rural refugee on a Christmas barstool to a romance that buds at a holiday dinner and blooms that night.) What Is Sexy? will clearly be more salacious, but it's hard to say how. Kenison wouldn't disclose many details about the production. Apparently, coyness is sexy.

He did say the material wasn't all overt: "Some people we interviewed said cable-knit sweaters were sexy. One phone sex worker told us how sexy empty buildings are. And this weather," Kenison said, looking over my shoulder and out the window into a sky patchy with clouds. "It's been really sexy lately."