A theatre company in the United Kingdom has cancelled their production of a sex-themed play for children, citing massive backlash and “violent and illegal threats.”
ThisEgg, a production company run by Josie Dale-Jones, was set to put on The Family Sex Show at the Royal Theatre in Bath, United Kingdom this coming May. The show was being run as part of the Theatre’s “incubator program,” a creative center within the facility intended to support projects aimed at young people.
On April 19, the production company’s official Twitter issued a thread detailing that it had cancelled the production, noting that it had received “violent and illegal threats.” ThisEgg will still be showing an exclusive, “invited audiences” only screening of the production.
Twitter users weren’t impressed by the appeal for sympathy, with most simply posting screenshots of information from the show’s own FAQs.
The Family Sex Show’s website had boasted that it was a performance intended for parents and children about “exploring names and functions, boundaries, consent, pleasure, queerness, sex, gender and relationships,” and that it seeks to provide “intersectional, feminist, non-binary, anti-racist & sex-positive take on Relationships and Sex Education.”
In one of the first points the public took issue with, ThisEgg stated that the age suitability for the show was 5+, asserting that “sexual development and behavior in children starts from birth.”
The FAQs also detailed that there would be full-frontal nudity, and that at one point in the show’s production, the actors would strip in front of the child-filled audience.
“There is nakedness, yes. At one point in the show, everyone on stage takes their clothes off to the level they feel comfortable to. For some people, that’s taking off all of their clothes and being completely naked. For other people that means taking off bottoms but leaving underwear on, for others it’s not taking off anything at all. This moment last approximately five minutes.”
The show also stated it hopes to serve as an “alternative to porn” for youngsters, noting that they will not be going over anything that is already “widely taught” including biology, reproduction, STIs, or other science-based sex education.
Within the April 19 thread, ThisEgg provided a link to their “zine,” which included some of the content the Family Sex Show intended to distribute to the child audience members. But while their apparent hope was to quell some of the outrage, the link only led to even more.
Within the ‘zine,’ children are given instructions on how to make play-dough genitals, including a vulva and penis. It also encourages the children to draw penises and vaginas based on their instructions.
In the information section on the vulva, it states: “Remember: not all women have vulvas, and not all vulvas belong to women.” Uniquely, no such disclaimer appears in the section on the penis.
In another section on ‘Loving Yourself,’ the children are led to the topic of masturbation, and asked “Is there a body part which feels especially nice to the touch for you?” and “If some of your pleasures are sexual, are there any sexual practices you might like to try?”
Themes of masturbation were carried on in the lyrics to songs that would have been played during the production, including one on male genitals which stated “I sometimes have a fiddle with my penis and my balls … Oh, go on then and touch it … touch it where you like.”
While the show is now cancelled, some have drawn parallels between it and a similar program which was featured on Danish television titled “Ultra Throws Away the Clothes.”
The award-winning, publicly funded program was centered around teaching a child audience about human bodies, sexuality, and body positivity. A prime feature of the program was children meeting with adults who would display their naked bodies in front of them, stripping during the show.
In 2021, Danish broadcaster DR quietly scrubbed one of the archived episodes of the show after discovering one of the men who had been brought on the program to strip in front of the child audience had been convicted of sexually abusing a child and possessing over 3,000 child sexual exploitation materials.
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