YOUR SEXTS ARE SHIT: OLDER BETTER LETTERS

YOUR SEXTS ARE SHIT: OLDER BETTER LETTERS at the Edinburgh Festival:
★★★★ THE GUARDIAN - SHOWS WE RECOMMEND
A triumphant Show…dripping with uninhibited desire.
★★★★ FEST
Mars raises a toast to the human libido, elevating the carnal alongside the cerebral. In her hands, intimate human connection seems such a wondrous thing.Stirs your soul as much as your senses.
★★★★ EDFEST MAGAZINE
What at first seemed to be a comedy show poking fun at the differences in historical and modern sexting, instead becomes a historical insight into sex and the queer narratives that are so easily lost within history.
★★★★ THE LIST
★★★★ EMILY JUPP
OUTSTANDING SHOW - FRINGE REVIEW
You won’t see anything quite like this on the Fringe.

A new filthy, funny and intimate solo show, triangulating the sex and love letters of long dead artists, contemporary sexts and a meditation on the construction of the queer female body. How do we write ourselves and for whom?

In June 2016, immediately after the Brexit vote I was depressed and in upstate New York. In order to cheer me up, performer Scott Sheppard read me some of Joyce's sex letters to Nora Barnacle.  They are beautiful, filthy, honest and surprising.

 You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat  fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties  ending in a long gush from your hole.
 - James Joyce, letter to Nora Barnacle, 1908

On returning home I went in search of other fantastic sex and love letters, and with the help of the internet, friends and two sexologists - Jana Funke and Lena Wanggren - unearthed letters dating back centuries. I called out for people’s sexts and dating app chats, and I went back through the ways I had used writing to construct my own identity. 

 I am on my back – waiting to be spread wide apart – waiting for you, to die with the  sense of you – the pleasure of you – the sensuousness of you touching the  sensuousness of me – all my body – all of me is waiting for you to touch the center of  me with the center of you.
 - Georgia O'Keeffe, letter to Alfred Stieglitz, 1922

The show features letters from Joyce, Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keeffe, Mozart, Charles Bukowski, Radclyffe Hall, Eleanor Roosevelt and others. It also includes sexts sent to me by anonymous donation.  It is a Queer Archive of longing, communication and sex acts.

The Guardian featured the show, you can read that article HERE

Rachel Mars Writer & Performer
Dinah Mullen Sound Design
Alex Fernandes Lighting Design
Lesley Ewen Additional Letter Writer/Performer
Wendy Hubbard and nat tarrab Dramaturgs
Lucy Jackson Producer
Jana Funke and Lena Wanggren Sexologists

Previous Performances: CPT (Pilot) 2017 | The Yard, London BAC 2018 |

Manchester Royal Exchange, Summerhall Edinburgh, Pulse Festival Ipswich, Birmingham Literature Festival, Cambridge Junction, South Street Reading, The House Plymouth, Falmouth University 2019 | Soho Theatre 2022 | Under The Radar NYC 2023 |

Photos by Alex Beckett, Maurizio Martorana, design by UandnonU