[2015021] Sex Idiot

[2015021] Sex Idiot

Bryony Kimmings @ Garden of Unearthly Delights – Le Cascadeur

11:00pm, Sat 14 Feb 2015

Without rambling too much – hey, I’ve got 147 shows to write about in less than three months, and I’m well aware of my ability to procrastinate – I’ve got a lot of friends whose opinions on art (and feminism, and feminist art) I trust. And they all, without exception, told me that Bryony Kimmings’ work must be seen. Schedule, pen, Sex Idiot was inked in.

It was only as I ticket-jumped the massive lineup for entry into a throbbing Garden that I actually comprehended what I had done: I had slotted this show in for a Saturday night. A Valentine’s Day Saturday night. And the queue, as I approached Le Cascadeur, was what I should have expected for a show called “Sex Idiot“, had I thought about it a little more: Clumps of drunk men. Fidgety sober couples. Couples where one person was obviously way more inebriated than the other, with a dark cloud of resentment forming over them. And, most ominously, a merry teenage hen’s night… and the girls barely looked old enough to drink.

But at least there was a crowd, right?

Le Cascadeur is uncomfortably full by the time everyone packs in – oh the joys of drunkards who forget there’s no backs to Le Casca’s benches – and there’s excited chatter around the crowd. What’s the show about? mused many, with some sloppy grins verbally hoping it was going to be a lewd form of standup. My brain momentarily flipped into misanthropic disgust mode, until I realised that I didn’t have a clue about the content of the show, either. I was here on the prompting of friends; I knew nothing about what kind of work Bryony Kimmings produced.

Performance art. Kimmings does performance art.

After being informed (as a result of her first test) that she had a relatively common STI, she decided to contact her previous sexual partners… both as common courtesy, and also to – maybe – figure out where the disease had come from. Using that as a narrative backbone, Sex Idiot was a linked series of performance pieces based on the responses she received (after Kimmings had pointedly stated that not everyone had responded). And these pieces were incredibly varied in nature: some focused only on the physical side of their relationship, others on the emotional. Some pieces were more about the formative aspects of their relationship, others on the destructive.

Inasmuch as the performance pieces were varied in content, so too was their delivery: there were songs, poetry, Dylan-esque delivery of vaginal pseudonyms, and even contemporary dance. And there was audience participation, too…

Oh, god. The audience.

The barely-legal hen’s party had managed to situate themselves in the second row, and were obviously of the mind that they were actually the stars of the show. Phones were constantly recording both Kimmings’ performance, as well as their own reactions, and their discussions as to the performance’s progression were more-than-audible. And this didn’t seem to faze the drunken majority of the audience; it was deemed to be part of the experience.

Initially, Kimmings seemed willing to tolerate their behaviour – one of her pieces (alluding to an older man who spoke loudly and authoritatively on any subject) was followed up with a pointed “See, girls, the takeaway from this was that you shouldn’t get married”… and the cold venom in the subsequent overly fake laughter that Kimmings directed at them was brutal.

But the girls – the audience – didn’t really care. When Kimmings asked for audience pubic hair donations (for the construction of her infamous pube-stache), there was a sobering moment where she discussed the diseases that can be passed by pubic hair contact… but most of the audience missed it, busy with their back-slapping self-congratulatory chatter as they bragged about their clippings.

And that, to me, is the sad part about this performance of Sex Idiot: so much of the performance was wasted on a bunch of people who weren’t really there to see that show. They didn’t care about the awesome tear-inducing vignette, they remained unaware of the social commentary, satire sailed over their heads, and they missed the nuance of the ceremony of the performance. But they sure caught every sex-related joke that Kimmings trotted out (and found humour when there wasn’t any intended).

And that made it really hard for me to enjoy the show… but I still managed to do so. But I wish I’d elected to see Sex Idiot on a night more conducive to a… less self-involved audience; I wish I was able to let the full impact of the work hit me. Because I’m not sure that I got to see the show at its potent best.

(Oh – many thanks to Jane for pointing these tweets out to me; it would appear that Kimmings herself was not particularly pleased with the audience at this performance…)

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