5 Guys Chillin' // King's Head Theatre and Em Lou Productions

As you check into 5 Guys Chillin’, you are handed two condoms and told not to use them during the performance. There’s some irony in the joke as the characters in the show probably wouldn’t want them.

The play is a snapshot of five guys during a chemsex party. This is usually defined as sex where the drugs (G or GHB, crystal meth and mephedrone) are taken before and during a prolonged ‘chill-out’ to prolong and enhance it. As with any other play, it would be wrong to extrapolate too widely, to suggest that it represented all in the “gay community”, itself a lazy term sometimes wrongly used interchangeably with “gay scene.” Both terms imply a complete uniformity of gay and bisexual experience. Nevertheless, a report on a survey of 1000 gay men in London in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham suggested that a tenth had had chemsex in the past 4 weeks. Reading into the actual survey though shows that the sample was recruited via “on-line social and sexual networking sites”, so it is unclear how representative it is.

The characters of 5 Guys Chillin’ reminisce about past fuck parties, and the drugs that allow them to party orgasm-free for days. Their conversation is only about sex. Most of them are HIV+, but they are fairly blasé about this as they have a low viral load. They prefer riding bareback anyway and are not all concerned about telling new partners their HIV status; one thinks all gay men should be HIV+ – after all PrEP is the solution. Other STDs are dismissed as curable inconveniences.

Gradually as the drugs start to work, individual differences emerge, with small glimpses of the men's back stories. Cultural pressures led to one guy to getting married, a set-up he has mixed feeling about, even though his wife knows he has sex with men. Others display wistful reflections on a past life without drugs. The guy who feels that being fisted helps someone to connect deeply inside him remains resolutely unquestioning – no regrets there. Strangely, much of this hedonism is reminiscent of attitudes during the 14th century to the Black Death, when desperate people who saw no future for humanity lived for the day and entirely for themselves. The guys in 5 Guys Chillin’ are cavalier about others, but also fatalistic about themselves.

- Alistair Lax

Links Relevant to this Diagnosis:

5 Guys Chillin'

What is Chemsex? - New Scientist

The Chemsex Study - Sigmar Research

Chemsex, HIV and STI Transmission - British Medical Journal

Personal Testimony of Chemsex Experience - London Evening Standard

TRIPLE THREAT // Lucy McCormick

McCormick and her Girl Squad boys run amuck in this whistlestop of the New Testament: as an affirmation of agency over our queer/female bodies, and in defiance of an ecclesiastical canon of morality politics and re/oppression.

Triple Threat drives McCormick’s indefatigable lack of inhibition right into our societal schemata of disgust, offense and body-squeamishness – in this country historically interwoven with Christian teaching and the influence of the Church. Her retelling of the story of Doubting Thomas - ‘reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side’ (John 20:27, King James) – culminates in anal digital penetration. We applaud the hilarity and the shock – can you believe she took it that far?? – but accept as comic foil the actual scriptural basis, where Jesus invites Thomas to put his hands inside the still-gaping wounds from his crucifixion. An authentic restaging of that passage would probably be a bit much for even the most bloodwork-hardened Fringe-goer.

For all the prudishness of their most ardent followers, religious texts are awash with bodily functions, pain, blood and sex. Their rituals provide ripe ground for reappropriation, by and for the bodies marginalised and policed by their archaic, literal interpretation. This reappropriation is especially urgent in the work of queer artists, such as Ron Athey whose performance offers abject resistance to the US government’s (lack of) response to the 80s/90s HIV epidemic. Deploying different devices and affects, Triple Threat makes a playground of the stand-off between religious conservatism and queer and women’s sexualities and bodies; as necessary as ever with religious institutions and individuals still lobbying “pro-life” but against the availability of PrEP.

- HM

Triple Threat is on at 20.10 at Underbelly Cowgate until August 28th (not 15th or 22nd). Hearing Loop, BSL - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/lucy-mccormick-triple-threat

On GETINTHEBACKOFTHEVAN, the performance collective McCormick constitues one third of: http://www.getinthebackofthevan.com/the-van/

Owen Jones in The Guardian on PrEP and valuing gay lives: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/02/nhs-prep-hiv-drugs-gay-mens-lives

The Herald on the Church's blocking of efforts to halt the spread of AIDS in the 80s: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/14631879.Churches_opposed_efforts_to_halt_AIDS_deaths_in_1980s_Scotland__secret_papers_reveal/

Blog on the policing of women’s bodies and modesty, on Patheos (dedicated to discussion of issues around faith): www.patheos.com/blogs/nolongerquivering/2012/12/modesty-body-policing-and-rape-culture-connecting-the-dots/

Pleading in the Blood, on the performance work of Ron Athey: http://www.thisisliveart.co.uk/publishing/pleading-in-the-blood-the-art-of-ron-athey

COME WITH ME // Helen Duff

In a world where magazine headlines scream about ever more exciting ways to achieve the heady heights of sexual pleasure, a comedy show based on the inability to hit the ‘big O’ is an oddity. The causes are many and varied, ranging from the physical impacts of health conditions, drugs or the menopause, to psychological issues such as fear or anxiety. In fact, depending on which set of figures you believe, somewhere between five and 12 per cent of women suffer from anorgasmia – the inability to experience an orgasm despite receiving sexual stimulation. Comedian Helen Duff is one of them, and turns what could be a frustrating situation into a frank and funny show climaxing with an anarchic group experience.  
 
Over the course of an hour, she morphs from the human embodiment of a sperm – clad in blue raincoat and leggings – through to a larger-than-life vulva complete with inexplicable Yorkshire accent, removable hair and prominent clitoris (a knitted pink bobble-hat). Together, we are aiming to recreate the mystery of the female orgasm. Our template for this exercise is a survey Duff has carried out, asking people to describe their experiences of pleasure. An all over sneeze combined with a really good itch. The feeling of having Belgian chocolate licked off your genitals. Like eating eight mangoes all at once. Almost dying. Like riding a unicorn through the sky. In the absence of unicorns, mangoes and chocolate, Duff hands out tools to the audience to help us come together: packets of ginger nuts, eight bananas, feather dusters and pots of bubble mixture.
 
By the end of the show, she’s riding across the cramped stage on the back of a burly man wearing a unicorn horn, beaten on the bottom by packets of biscuits and gagging on half-chewed bananas. The result is a breathless, sweaty mess, and judging by the look on Duff’s face, she seemed to enjoy it as much as we did.

- KA 

Come With Me is on at 17.45 at Pleasance That until August 19th (not 15th). Wheelchair Access, Level Access, Hearing Loop - https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/helen-duff-come-with-me

Information about anorgasmia: http://www.lanarkshiresexualhealth.org/unable-to-orgasm-anorgasmia/

In Psychology Today - 'Help! I can’t have an orgasm!': https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/save-your-sex-life/201111/help-i-cant-have-orgasm