10/10, no notes. ….

That’s not really enough for a review I guess but Whore’s Eye View, by Kaytlin Bailey, doesn’t really need much more. Still, here you go.

For her last night performing in Aotearoa, Kaytlin welcomes her sell-out audience to the … umm … deconstructed(?) basement which is the Knockabout Studio. She starts us off with a rehearsal of our possible emotional responses to her narrative – I don’t think we collectively pass with flying colours exactly, but that’s often the way with audiences who book tickets for interactive performances. She explains that she’ll be talking about sex workers throughout history – and because we bought tickets, we’ve given implied consent. She goes on to say it’s going to be an aggressive lecture and now we have informed consent. No one leaves, so she begins. 

Salted with humour and expressive pauses, Kaytlin takes us on a journey from the beginning of humankind to the present day, describing the normality of sex work, from prehistoric women who, like those of us with uteruses today, were probably always a little bit iron-deficient, and traded sex for meat, to the movements advocating both for and against sex work, during a backdrop of 20^th and 21^st century Christian morality and patriarchy. There are juicy facts sprinkled throughout (the Catholic church was the biggest owner of brothels for 400 years – do not as I do, but as I say, anyone…?), provocative summaries – the Malleus Maleficarum is just 276 pages saying bitches be witches – and observations that gently twist needles under our fingernails – if you hate people doing gross stuff for money, you hate poverty, not prostitution.

Kaytlin has a beautiful way with words – she talks about the slipperiness between ‘whore’ and ‘woman’ and our transition from deity to demon, from vermin to victim. She weaves threads of comparison between the glorification and sanctification of the extreme violence of the military and the demonisation of sex work. There are implicit gender roles at play here, borne out through her historical references and the evolution of the patriarchy framed in the arms of the courtesan.

There’s a lot to make any objective, open-minded or compassionate human angry, but Kaytlin describes so many incredibly powerful women that no one knows much about that there’s somehow a sense of hope that we might get back one day to a society that treasures women as their own beings, and also values equitable access to pleasure and bodily autonomy.

She mentions a few times that as an audience we seem to be unresponsive or not getting what she’s giving us, but I think we’re all just mesmerised. 

June 2 is International Whore’s Day – put it in your diary now. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer

Kaitlin Bailey emerges from the audience in BATS Theatre’s Stage space and begins her show by taking the audience through a deep breath. She then makes it clear that most of the stories she will tell are similar to her own experience and, being a western woman from the USA, they are mostly about people who come from similar backgrounds. 

Bailey explains the word whore originally described a ‘woman who desires’, and spends the next 75 minutes explaining how whores went from being praised and worshipped in the form of goddesses to being vilified as witches. She also raises our awareness of the current movement to reclaim the dignity of the word and the women who are, and have been, labelled as whores. 

As someone who holds a history degree, I can confidently say Whore’s Eye View is one of the best history lectures I have ever received. Bailey takes the audience through 10,000 years of sexual history. Making use of her own history degree, she intertwines the lesson with hilarious comedy, saying the things that most of us think but are too scared to say aloud.

The show is filled with details that everyone should know but the majority of the audience was not aware of. Bailey also uses her own experience as a sex worker to inform the discussion. The combination of the historical, comedic and personal elements creates an engaging and informative experience.

Bailey is charismatic and confident while also exuding a comforting vibe that puts the audience at ease. Her straightforwardness is refreshing and breaks down any tension the audience feels about discussing sex. The show includes references to Aotearoa which help the audience feel closer to the topic and relate what we are hearing to our own surroundings. Bailey is also notably inclusive of transgender and non-binary identities.

Bailey shows that at the forefront of every major development in history there have been sex workers, and provides the proof to back these claims up. She also shines a light on the hypocrisy of the world by pointing out that the same society that cares about exploitation and individuals being sold for their bodies when it comes to sex work, has had no qualms about sending young men to war to fight in battles that leave them traumatised. She illustrates this hypocrisy by once again using personal examples.

Kaytlin Bailey is a storyteller and a comedian, but as I leave the theatre my lasting impression is that she is a fantastic advocate. She has brought Whore’s Eye View from New York on the show’s world tour, offering a show that everyone, regardless of their personal views on sex work, simply has to experience. 

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer