Ladies, you too could be drawn into the acting area and dressed up to represent a clitoris, to be duly stroked and rubbed with sticks, to the point of orgasm, as it were. By this stage of a really full-on show, this is simply funny, and the volunteer involved gets a big round of applause for her cheerful participation.

Full-on it is – not an orgy per se, but high-energy, verbally explicit, disregarding normal inhibitions. At the start, Freya comes out into the acting area (and will exit at the end) through a kind of narrow pink arch that evidently represents a giant vulva. Oh well. She launches into a high-energy rap about gender equality and sexuality. 

Within a one-hour ‘solo’ show she draws in audience-members for little enactments relating to four themes.

Has genuine and lasting gender-equality really been attained in this country, in the light of particular achievements? An audience-member is asked to try to build a tower with cardboard cylinders from toilet-paper rolls, and soon enough gives up. 

What does sex-education at schools amount to? Often not much, evidently, when one such regime includes how to walk, and sit down, unsluttishly, with high heels. She tries to train a willing bloke. Uh-oh.   

What does giving and getting consent to have sex really require? She freely acknowledges that her own first sexual experience had been not experienced at all – someone had had sex with her when she was out-cold-drunk – essentially, he raped her.  Again there’s an enactment requiring a very explicit consenting.

Finally, she proclaims that sex should be enjoyable, and fun, and let’s not exclude masturbation, wanking, since you know yourself better than anyone else does. And here’s where the clitoris business comes in, whether the stimulator is someone else or yourself.  

It’s all lively, often laugh-out-loud funny, cleverly paced, and makes you think. Freya Desmarais manages very well to push boundaries, to win rapport, and to involve audience-volunteers in a feel-good way, and you can’t help loving her work.

This show’s been performed earlier in Auckland and Wellington, and is here in Palmerston North as one of four solo works within a festival organized by Nathan Mudge.

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I have to say I am shocked! As a baby boomer who participated in the Sexual Revolution and has the campaign buttons to prove it (‘Make Love Not war’; ‘How Dare You Assume I Am Heterosexual’; ‘The Personal Is Political’ … were there others?), I simply assumed subsequent generations had absorbed the appropriate values through enlightened education and by social osmosis.

We were the generation who rebelled against repressive attitudes to sex; against being taught it was dirty and shameful unless sanctified by marriage wherein a husband’s ‘conjugal rights’ were implicit. We rediscovered the Karma Sutra and Hindu Art of Love and happily embraced the illustrated The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Lovemaking (first published in 1972 – and well used as an antidote to prevailing teenage surf-scene norms in season two of the Australian series Puberty Blues, also set in the ’70s and recently screened on TVNZ). Given mutual pleasure is fundamental to those teachings, consent, as such, is surely implicit.

I am therefore shocked to learn, from Freya Desmarais’ Live Orgy, that it was only a couple of months ago – a few weeks after Live Orgy premiered in Auckland – that the Ministry of Education recommended the concept of consent be included in sex education for secondary schools. Is pleasure now an official curriculum concept too? And what has been taught in the meantime? ‘Stranger Danger’, the mechanics of copulation, how to make a banana safe …

Oh, and how to walk in high heels. Yes, Desmarais learned that at a private girls’ school in Sydney as part of Sex Education. And on this opening night in Wellington, yours truly gets to learn and demonstrate this finer art to much hilarity all round (I must confess I enjoy feeling taller and more statuesque), until its purpose and role in the sexual equation is revealed.

Reality check: the Roast Busters scandal; date rape drugs; males’ testosterone-driven sense of entitlement … Of course there is a rape culture out there and it needs to be addressed, not least by ensuring people are very clear about where the line lies between clear consent and rape. Desmarais’ personal stories are revealing, enlightening and sobering. Silence can be so deep when an audience is processing such experiences with profound empathy.

Equal and opposite is the laughter of shocked recognition and joyful empathy as Desmarais shares her ‘river in the Coromandel’ experience at a Young Greens camp, reminds us of important historical moments, and hand-picks ‘volunteers’ to demonstrate crucial aspects of her ‘lessons’ concerning sexual consent, safety and pleasure.

A salutary story time segment treats us to Peter Penis in Yes Means Yes by Brendon Green, who also directs. The staging is effectively simple with pride of place, upstage centre, being given to a pink portal complete with a strategically-placed mirror ball at its apex – which cries out to spin and reflect its shards of delight.

In the process of rapping, sharing, teaching and facilitating, Desmarais entertains with a purpose and joy that indeed ensures mutual pleasure in a safe environment. It is tempting to think she has already made a difference, as evidenced by the Min Ed decision (above). We can definitely say she has her finger on the pulse of what’s needed …

The question is, are those who will flock to Bats to see Live Orgy the most in need of enlightenment or is she preaching to the proverbial choir? What would it take for the Min Ed to contract Desmarais to tour NZ high schools with this show, or at least develop a DVD version of it, so the message is received where it counts? Now there is a consummation to be desired.

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“Home is heaven and orgies are vile /But you need an orgy once in a while,” wrote American humorist Ogden Nash. Freya Desmarais would agree.

Live Orgy, which is her second show at Bats Theatre in two weeks, is described by her as “a feminist apocalypse” and a “feminist spider’s web” in which she attempts to get rid of all the men in the audience right from the start. She relents and lets us stay because she has an “orgy of ideas about sex”. [More]

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What would Freud say? 

Going to the opening night of a comedy show as part of Auckland’s Fringe Festival entitled Live Orgy I expected a night of raucous, explicit humour and was not disappointed in the least. My disappointment that I was not turning up for an actual live orgy was compensated by the jocular introduction of the show being a sex-positive feminist campaign to “Live Or Gy” as in “Live or Die” or “Live Or Gy[rate]”- whichever you prefer, really.

Live Orgy is written by and performed solely by Freya Desmarais, with amusing interjections by director-dramaturgist Brendon Green. Audience participation is prepped by Demarais’ presence on stage as the audience filters in. [More]

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The danger of creating a show that relies heavily on audience participation is that you might end up inviting your reviewer onstage to dress up like a giant clitoris. 

But what else could I have expected from a show called Live Orgy, staged at Auckland’s grungy Basement Theatre as part of the Fringe and Pride festivals, and promoted with pictures of a buxom lass in a bubble bath?

With a set that is a metaphor for… er… (well it’s made up of two large pink shells with a pink disco ball hanging between them, you work it out), a props cupboard that seems entirely comprised of weapons, and lollies and condoms to be given away, Live Orgy is no ordinary orgy. 

In fact, it’s not an orgy at all. It’s a trick. A terrible feminist trick designed to lure men down to The Basement for the sex education they never got at school. As performer Freya Desmarais says, “It’s an orgy of ideas.” 

Her own sex education involved learning how to walk down stairs in high heels – which, unsurprisingly, turned out to be inadequate preparation for adulthood. Now Desmarais is on a mission to revolutionise the way we teach people about intimacy.

There’s a lot of genius in this show. There’s an opening so good it could be a TED Talk. Some ‘flows’ and puns that are so bad they’re excellent (feeling con…sensual, anyone?). There are some lines – like, “why do I have to get sexually harassed when all I want is a chip sandwich” – that make you feel like yelling, “I hear you sister!” 

There’s a lot of awkwardness too. There’s good awkwardness – some of the stories are raw and harrowing and worth telling. There’s some creepy awkwardness too – forgotten lines, weird tangents… and did I mention I had to dress up like a clitoris? 

Live Orgy muddles through with all the rage, hilarity and complexity of life – but with significantly more guns. And feathers. It may not have all the answers, but Desmarais has sure got a lot of ideas.

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