Pay­ing for it: an insider’s guide to the NZ sex industry

The Pros­ti­tu­tion Reform Act was passed in 2003 but appar­ently sex work is still a con­tro­ver­sial job choice. As one of the speak­ers says “It seems like nev­er is a good time to talk about sex work. “ So it’s really neat that sev­er­al have got togeth­er to tell us stor­ies about their lives. None of them are stage per­formers but all are determ­ined to con­quer their nerves to let us know a bit about their lives.

There are themes through all the stor­ies – dis­cre­tion is their busi­ness. Sex work is basic­ally ther­apy. The cli­ents can be phys­ic­ally and verbally dan­ger­ous. The industry can be dan­ger­ous. The encoun­ters can be emo­tion­ally charged exper­i­ences. The lines between pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al can blur. There are eth­ic­al as well as phys­ic­al con­sid­er­a­tions. Bound­ar­ies, pay­ment, and the even­tu­al phys­ic­al intim­acy are import­ant. We heard about work­ers sup­port­ing each oth­er. Events that could have ended fatally for the indi­vidu­al and how skills of nego­ti­ation, con­fid­ence, and ingenu­ity were employed to save them­selves. How work­ing with dis­abled indi­vidu­als is incred­ibly reward­ing and how import­ant it is to keep the rules of engage­ment clear.

Thank you to every­one involved in this talk. I thought it was fas­cin­at­ing.

[Note for the speak­ers – There’s no need for you to apo­lo­gise for a (self-per­ceived) lack of present­a­tion pol­ish. Your words and stor­ies are good – trust your­self!]

 

Easy liv­ing: life in a small town

Presen­ted by Play­shop this show is based around small town life. The ask fors are about the char­ac­ter­ist­ics of liv­ing in a small town which the cast then riff off.  It fea­tures a rolling cast and a struc­ture of a scene with two people, then a mono­logue from one of them, then a scene between that per­son and someone else etc. On the night I went the cast was 6 men and 3 women which meant there were a lot of same-gender pair­ings. There were some really great (funny) moments and some near-misses res­ult­ing in a show that was more slice of life than a neatly wrapped up story. Spe­cial men­tion to the music­al accom­pani­ment and light­ing people for their good work. (Sorry, no pro­gramme for names!)

An enjoy­able early even­ing show.

  • Easy liv­ing: life in a small town on at Gryphon Theatre to 19 Feb­ru­ary 2017