Queer Acts
July 13-18
The Bus Stop Theatre, 2203 Gottingen Street
$15/$12
Queer Acts, Halifax's Pride theatre festival, is back for round eight this year, showcasing a variety of inclusive and queer friendly theatre productions from July 13-17. One of those shows is Sit on my Face, again, the res-Erection, produced by Rolling Bold Productions.
The comedic production is a series of 10 true monologues submitted from people in the community, centred around themes of sex and sexual education. Sit on my Face first premiered last year at the Atlantic Fringe Festival, of which the show's three producers (Samantha Horak, Meredith Higgins and Kathleen Higgins) remember tenderly.
"At one point, the entirety of 150 people inside the Company House [were] singing a song about period sex," recalls Kathleen. "It was beautiful."
This year, the production is back with new stories, and a focus on increasing the diversity of voices which the producers felt were missing last time.
Horak describes Sit on my Face as a "live theatre zine," referring to the collaborative community effort made in submitting the personal stories. Although the monologues are each their own individual memory, "there is a universality in a lot of them," says Horak.
The directors hope Sit on my Face will be educational, as well as a chance to laugh...or cry.
"Sexual education is more than just in the classroom. You get your sexual education from experience, movies, your parents, bizarre things your friends said to you in the change room. It can take many forms," says Horak.
"The more conservations about consent and inclusivity keep coming up, you realize that you need a stronger sexual education foundation," she says. "Hopefully we can be a bit of that." —Ashley Corbett
