What We're Seeing: "Sexplay" at Brussels FAME Festival
A moving, albeit stunted, exploration of one woman’s journey into sexual freedom
What follows below is a Fast Write exercise carried out as part of the International Association of Theatre Critics’ Young Critics workshop, wherein 20 participants from 11 countries were selected to view, analyze, and critique Brussels’ first FAME Festival (festival where arts meet empowerment). Broadway DNA’s Natalie Rine was the selected American ambassador to the 2022 cohort.
“Sexplay,” an ambitious autobiographical fiction by Camille Husson now playing as part of the Brussels’ FAME Festival, utilizes lights, language, and the human body to depict a moving, albeit stunted, exploration of one woman’s journey into sexual freedom from childhood to present day.
Inherent in the genre of a one person show brings an inescapable pact of intimacy between audience and actor, and Husson plays with this self-awareness throughout the sixty minutes by emphasizing a presentational speech delivery. At times this didactic quality detracts from the personal nature of her narrative, where gratuitous listings of sexual deviation definitions ramble on from A to Z bordering on the self-indulgent if not downright self-aggrandizing. But the best moments derive when Husson excavates, reclaims, and flirts with language, shooting around newfound phrases and metaphors (“champagne box,” “hedgehog”) for female sexual pleasure and genitalia like direct arrows into our commonplace terms that comparably reek of depravity.
Husson’s power as a performer is in her comfort to take up space, empowering explicit language and scenarios not to be titillating but sincere. Flitting between various impactful scenarios on her journey of self-discovery, our heroine embodies the sexuality she’s speaking of through possessing a playful quality; Husson bumps, grinds, grasps, and gyrates, freely stretching and contorting her body movements to illustrate the story without being grotesquely overt. This tasteful balance without the male gaze leads to the show’s most arresting, visually stunning, and vulnerable moment wherein she visits a notorious Berlin sex club; shirtless and alone, painted in bright glow in the dark neon across her chest, backlit while the lights are dimmed, the audience is forced to gaze at Husson’s vacillation between confidence and confusion not with lust but with quiet empathy.
Through the assistance of the lights as a scene partner in instances like this, the play’s atmosphere feels intimate and never gaudy. Single bulbs or the singular scenic element of a neon square elucidate such varied settings as an attic, nightclub, or nature with a pulsing, flowing ease that matches and reflects the text.
The permeating takeaway from “Sexplay” is the sense of rhythm in the play, a musicality found in Husson’s language, lights, and movement that will remain imprinted on you long after you leave the theater, reflecting on your own journey’s rhythm as well.
Production credits
“Sexplay”
CREATED BY AND WITH Camille Husson SOUND David Votre Chazam | VOICE Janine Godinas | LIGHTING Michel Dalvigne | SOUND TECHNICIANS Michael Delvigne and Aurore Leduc | CO-DIRECTOR Marion Lory | DRAMATURGICAL SUPPORT Olivier Hespel | BODY WORK Milton Paulo | ADVISOR Isabelle Bats
“Sexplay” ran as part of the first FAME (festival where arts meet empowerment) Festival from the 19th to the 24th September 2022 at the Théâtre des Riches-Claires (Rue des Riches Claires 24, 1000 Bruxelles, Belgium). The performance runs approximately 1 hour with no intermission. Performed in French with English, French, and Dutch subtitles. Please visit https://famefestival.be/en/festival/ for more information.