Your Sexts Are Shit: Older Better Letters

An intimate, funny, filthy and moving show that triangulates the sex and love letters of long dead artists, contemporary sexts and a meditation on the construction of the queer female body. What role does writing have in creating our sexual identity? How do we write ourselves and for whom? How have newer, faster communication methods changed the way we write desire?Do you want to read more about writer and performer Rachel Mars?  Read below ↓

The show features an array of letters from dead writers, artists and a monk. They include James Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mozart, Charles Bukowski, Radclyffe Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt and others.

Background

"In June 2016, immediately after the Brexit vote I was depressed and in upstate New York. In order to cheer me up, performer Scott Sheppard read me some of James Joyce's sex letters to Nora Barnacle. They were extremely explicit and surprisingly beautiful."On returning home, Mars went in search of other fantastic sex and love letters, and with the help of the internet, friends and two sexologists - Jana Funke and Lena Wanggren - unearthed letters dating back centuries. She also called out for people’s sexts and dating app chats, and went back through the ways she had used writing to construct her own identity.The result is a kind of queer live archive of longing, communication and the writing of pleasure.

About Rachel Mars

Rachel Mars is a multi-award winning theatre maker. Her show OUR CARNAL HEARTS won a Total Theatre Award for Innovation in 2017, and the company she co-runs - Mars.tarrab - were the 2017 Oxford Samuel Beckett Trust Award winners for ROLLER at the Barbican. She is a regular on BBC Radio 2, and a fellow of the Birkbeck Centre for Contemporary Theatre.

THE GUARDIAN - SHOWS WE RECOMMEND ★★★★

"A triumphant Show…dripping with uninhibited desire."

FEST ★★★★

"In Mars' hands, intimate human connection seems such a wondrous thing. Stirs your soul as much as your senses."

EDFEST MAGAZINE ★★★★

"What at first seemed to be a comedy show poking fun at the differences in historical and modern sexting, instead becomes a historical insight into sex and the queer narratives that are so easily lost within history."

THE LIST★★★★

FRINGE REVIEW ★★★★

"Outstanding show. You won’t see anything quite like this on the Fringe."