What happens when men think they can buy women? When bodies are governed by someone else’s desire? Based on real-life experience, interviews with sex workers, and stories hitherto untold, Fluff will challenge your beliefs around sex work – and show you how it’s done.
Following two Dublin strippers through an evening’s work, this performance explores contemporary perspectives on sex work in a setting which is usually kept safely behind closed doors. The play invites you into the world of Lola and Carli as they wait, hustle, watch the clock tick, and share their thoughts on money, sex, and power.
All this, in eight inch heels and pink acrylics. Trust us – you do not want to miss this.
In 2022 Ireland, selling sex is not illegal – but the buying of sex is illegal. This framework, known as the Nordic model or ‘end demand’, was introduced in 2017. Controversially, in conjunction with already existing brothelkeeping laws, the implementation of this model has caused sex workers to feel more unsafe, more stigmatised, more isolated. So who then benefits from these laws, if not those whom they claim to protect?
Production
Lianne O’Hara is a poet, playwright, and prose writer. Her work is widely published and anthologised in Abridged, Poetry Ireland Review, Banshee, Washing Windows Too, Queering the Green, and elsewhere. Fluff is her debut play. For more, see lianneohara.com
Directed by Liam Halligan. Sound and Composition by Denis Clohessy. Lighting Design by Eoin Lennon. Set Design by Kieran McBride. Costumes and Makeup by Shauna Maher. With Shir Madness, Aaron Lockhart, and Lianne O’Hara.
Venue, dates
Smock Alley Theatre – Black Box, 6-7 Exchange Street Lower, Temple Bar, Dublin 8. Presented as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2022 (fringefest.com – 11-26 September). Wheelchair accessible. The performance is approximately 50 minutes in length.
20 September 18.15, preview, €11
21-24 September 21:15, €14/€12
24 September 18:15, extra performance, €14/€12
fringefest.com/festival/whats-on/fluff
Note: Amnesty International’s 2022 report ‘We live within a violent system: structural violence against sex workers in Ireland’ shows an increased risk of violence and decreased safety for sex workers since the introduction of the Nordic Model. The online archive brothelkeepers.org lists nearly a hundred cases of sex workers – not pimps, not landlords, not malevolent human trafficking rings – being prosecuted for brothelkeeping, including a pregnant migrant woman in Co. Kildare who was sentenced to nine months in prison in 2019.
