Why I Wrote the Play I Wrote
Nathan Joe on Like Sex
Article originally appeared in and written for Playmarket Annual
Article originally appeared in and written for Playmarket Annual
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The girl with a reputation for sleeping around.
The boy you almost never see in class. The mean girl who embraces being a bitch. The popular guy who might not be as nice as he thinks he is. The wallflower in love with the guy she barely knows. The gay kid in love with their best friend. The geek who just wants to play video games. Who are these people? You’ll call them stereotypes or strangers. But they are you. They are you before you left high school. They are you before you did that massive life-changing OE. They are you before you moved out of home and started paying rent. They are you before you got that job you said you’d never do. They are you before you got married. You, your friends, your children. |
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Based on the structure of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde. Like Sex takes seven teenagers and throws them into a daisy chain of love and sex. Couples flirt, fight, and fuck their way through interlocking scenes. When I was commissioned to write the play by Young and Hungry in 2015 I didn’t really know what I was doing. All I knew was that I wanted to update La Ronde for teenagers, a Spring Awakening for today.
The play’s working title Dance of Flesh seems more than a little inappropriate in retrospect: too pretentious, too European, better suited to something by Ingmar Berman or August Strindberg maybe. Hardly reflective of a play about high school teenagers. If the current title Like Sex seems glib, I guess that’s the point. Sex, for all the seriousness we give it is equally made out like a joke, the punchline of every teen comedy.
The play’s working title Dance of Flesh seems more than a little inappropriate in retrospect: too pretentious, too European, better suited to something by Ingmar Berman or August Strindberg maybe. Hardly reflective of a play about high school teenagers. If the current title Like Sex seems glib, I guess that’s the point. Sex, for all the seriousness we give it is equally made out like a joke, the punchline of every teen comedy.
"No teenager wants to appear weak in front of his or
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Though sex induces laughter and giggles in most teenagers, it also makes them feel achingly vulnerable. The problem is they don’t want to admit that. No teenager wants to appear weak in front of his or her peers or condescended to by adults. So while sex education is invaluable at explaining the essentials (pregnancy, STIs, condoms) you can’t teach people the inner-workings of the human heart. Emotional intelligence isn’t taught in classrooms, it’s gained through experience and reflection.
Looking back and talking to old friends, I realised just how fraught those years were. I realised how those deeply complicated emotions stick with you, as much as you want to shrug them off. Teenagers are forced to deal with feelings they are never quite ready for: sex being one of the very first adult choices they ever have to make. They’re simultaneously told they’re almost adults and that they’re still only children. And let’s not forget the impending NCEA exams to top it all off. Often all they have to turn to is film and television for advice, which is usually over-saturated with content telling them how they should be, rather than reflecting how they actually are. |
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If Schnitzler’s original, published in 1900, was an examination of class, showing audiences that sex was the greatest social equaliser, whether you were a doctor, poet or maid, I wanted to show that teenagers don’t need to be portrayed as alien, as mysterious unfathomable creatures. Theatre can’t replace real-world experience, but it seems significant that a story about everyday teenagers should come to life on stage. No Hollywood bodies, no photoshopping, just living, breathing human beings right in front of you. In a time where sex can be found between the pages of newspapers, on television, our laptops and phones, where people are reduced to profiles and objects, theatre is a potent reminder that we’re flesh and blood.
It’s a fine line walking the tight-rope between preachiness and acceptance though. If I ever have kids, I don’t know what I’ll do, how I’ll talk to them, how I’ll protect them without over-sheltering them. Luckily this is not a cautionary tale about the dangers of sex. It’s not meant to be didactic or instructive. Like Sex isn’t a one size fits all condom. The vastness of people’s experiences are too immense to cover in a single play. Like Sex is simply a snapshot of seven young people on the cusp of adulthood, attempting to deal with the complications that come with love and sex. |
"It’s not meant to be didactic or instructive. Like Sex isn’t a one size fits all condom." |
There’s the quote by Jack Kerouac from On the Road (bear with me): “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk – real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.” Replace America with New Zealand, and you’ve got a perfect encapsulation of the central idea running through Like Sex. The fact that the modern world is rife with pornography, dating apps, and social media hasn’t really changed the fundamentals of how we behave or who we are. If anything they make things clearer.
We’re all searching for connection, teenagers and adults alike. Sex is easy. But intimacy? That’s the hard part.
We’re all searching for connection, teenagers and adults alike. Sex is easy. But intimacy? That’s the hard part.
