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The conceit of All the Sex I've Ever Had is simple: A panel of performers, all over the age of 65, give year-by-year accounts of their coital histories. But—as with much sex—it's hardly that simple in practice. Far more than an inventory of bedpost notches, the performance is testament to the rawness of emotion, the fullness of life and the power of resiliency. If you see any amount of theater, you know that every damn playbill promises work that speaks to the truth of the human condition. All the Sex actually does that. In other words: Go see this show.
The project comes from Mammalian Diving Reflex, a Toronto-based performance group known for its socially engaged work (including training kids to give haircuts, a piece that hit PICA's Time-Based Art Festival in 2007). About a month ago, Mammalian assembled five Portlanders—three men, two women—between the ages of 66 and 76. Two were recruited on OkCupid; the others on Facebook or at senior centers or through family. Next came exhaustive interviews about sex: everything from first times to ecstatic orgies to unwanted pregnancies to masturbation to what (or whom) they did last night.
Unfortunately, I canât reveal those details here. At the beginning of each performance, standing in the skittering light beams of a disco ball, audience members take a vow of secrecy: What happens in All the Sex Iâve Ever Had stays in All the Sex Iâve Ever Had, âso help us Bud Clark.â Yet it's not the racy details I would want to reveal, anywayâtheyâre not what stick after the performance ends.
So what does? To name a few things: The unscripted remarks. The tremendous laughter. The utterly unaffected smiles. The spontaneous applause. The affectionate eye contact between the five performers. And, more than anything, the absolutely earned sense of warmth that fills the room by show's end.
SEE IT: All the Sex I've Ever Had is at Portland State University, Shattuck Hall Annex, 1914 SW Park Ave. 7 pm Thursday-Saturday, Sept. 18-20. $20-$25.
WWeek 2015
