Sex on Stage: intimate reflections on Edinburgh Fringe 2025
Sex on stage, or simulations of sex on stage, have a propensity to feel awkward rather than steamy, clumsy in stead of sensual – they make my heart beat for all the wrong reasons. Stage sex is a world away from cinematic Netflix fucking. Perhaps it’s because of the intimacy of the shared space: these are real people in front of us, breathing, unbuckling belts, touching lips. Perhaps it’s because my little sister is sitting next to me, or my mum, or my first date, or a whole room full of strangers. In my experience, the smaller the space, the more my skin crawls when characters get hot and heavy (call me a prude, I dare you.) Is it because stage sex feels more akin to a peep show or a strip club, more ‘real’ because of it’s liveness but still not real enough to convince us? So it sits sweating in the most un-sweet of spots. Is it because it feels less ‘safe’ (for audience and actors alike) than watching people behind a screen who we hope have had an intimacy director but we know have been through post-production which edits their loose limbs into one slick, fixed take. There is something instinctively uncomfy for me about watching sex on a small stage, especially when I know that current budgets rarely leave room for much-needed intimacy co-ordinators – perhaps part of the problem. Whilst I’m all for theatre that feels dangerous, unsafe and uncomfortable – I don’t mean this kind of uncomfy. Which is why I have been surprised again and again this year at Fringe by the level of creativity and care that has gone into directing sex scenes that feel super sexy without even attempting to represent literal sex.
Good Vibrations
Get Off by Kaity Baird
It’s worth mentioning that Katy Baird is naked from the get-go. Thanks to the advice of her £15 an hour ‘life coach’ she’s not completely naked. Her bare flesh is strapped (not securely) into a web of fluorescent neon elasticated straps, reminiscent of what a raving sky-diver might wear. I should know, I was invited to ping one against her boob (hard.) As the name of the show suggests, this is a show about getting off – raw video footage of Baird snorting lines, taking a shit, sleeping, taking a shit fills the giant projector screen behind her throughout the performance. The body is very present. As we near the climax of the show Baird herself lies face down on the floor of Summerhall’s Tech Cube to reach climax herself. How does she do it? She jiggles. That’s it. She jiggles her body like a human shaped jello to the beat of the music. Voila. In a show of excretions and ingestions that some viewers find “vulgar” and “disgusting” (Guardian, I’m looking at you hun) Baird’s one-woman wank-fest is actually one of the most liberating parts of the show. Much more enjoyable than the classic ‘hand slowly moving down her body until it’s under the blanket’ style of women wanking we’re used to seeing on stage. Add to that the warren of animatronic bunnies Baird sets free across the stage (really rampant rabbits!!) and you’ve got yourself one sexy battery-powered climax.
Projections & Puppetry
This is Not About Me by Hannah Caplan
An arts and crafts bonanza of a show, everything about this production is woven together with the utmost love and care. A non-linear two-person love(?) story, in equal parts meta-theatrical and self aware, “You had sex three times and wrote an entire show about it” Eli shouts at Grace, which is an accusation that stings because it is true. Naturally these three defining sexual encounters form the beating heart of Grace’s show – but how on earth are we meant to appreciate them in the Former Women’s Locker room around a tiny traverse stage? Giant puppet heads of course! Rather than unbuttoning clothes, Grace and Eli grab giant puppet head versions of themselves. In a stroke of staging genius, it is the puppet head Grace and Eli who bounce up and down breathlessly, it is the giant puppet’s mouths that say things like ‘What do you want me to do you?’ and suffer the indignity of having fingers shoved down their throats, which is both hilarious and recognisably uncomfortable – but the good kind of uncomfy where only puppet heads were harmed in the making. Another clever trick involves projecting a video of Eli in bed, clutching at white sheets, so that when the flesh and blood Grace stands in front of the projection, Eli’s holographic hands appear to be grabbing at her real white trousers.
One-woman Workout
Float by Indira Wilson
Another one woman show, Float is a beautifully crafted monologue written by Indra Wilson which explores the grief of queer pregnancy loss through the incredibly rich metaphor of space travel. Wilson’s comparison of the way a human body changes when it becomes pregnant to an astronaut experiencing zero-gravity and G-force for the first time is pure genius. So naturally the simulation of sex on stage is done just as playfully and euphemistically: we watch Wilson ‘training’ to become an astronaut with her partner, named Nasa. Her and Nasa ‘train’ everywhere: the bedroom, the kitchen, even the park, Wilson tells us, as she mountain climbers and hip thrusts her way across the stage in a shiny space suit until she is thoroughly out of breath. Wilson finds that she’s actually really good at ‘training’ – a natural born astronaut in fact. Wilson trains so hard and so often she makes herself sick in her space suit. Whilst at times the obvious double entendres of the metaphor make Float feel like it was written more for a teenage audience than adults, I appreciated this clever way of communicating the addictive endorphin rush and breathless exertion of sex as a young adult – all without breaking a sweat. I can definitely see this production being toured around secondary schools as a powerful way to break the silence for all those young astronauts who were launched into space but never quite reached their stars.
