Sex Education II
The New Post Office opens the 2022/2023 season with a project exploring sexual pleasure as the basic sexual right in the framework of human rights. The creators research topics such as painful intercourse and vaginismus,* consent, sexual pleasure of women with disability, alternative sexual practices, and the history of sex education in Yugoslavia. The series of lectures-performances will be connected and developed in a full-day event in October 2023.
Directed by Tjaša Črnigoj
A series of lecture-performances on sexual pleasure of women*
* by women we mean all women (trans, intersex and cis)
#uživalasem (#ienjoyedmyself)
We collect personal stories about exploring and discovering your own pleasure
Co-production: Nova pošta (Mladinsko Theatre and Maska Ljubljana) and City of Women
Premiere: December 2022
The project is supported by the City of Ljubljana – Department of Culture and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Slovenia.
Sex Education II is part of the project Reparative Practices for a New Cultural Ecosystem, developed and implemented with the support of the EU Creative Europe Programme by Kurziv – Platform for Issues of Culture, Media and Society, Stanisław Brzozowski Association/Krytyka Polityczna and Maska Ljubljana.
“Sexual pleasure is the physical and/or psychological satisfaction and enjoyment derived from shared or solitary erotic experiences, including thoughts, fantasies, dreams, emotions, and feelings. […] Sexual pleasure is a fundamental part of sexual rights as a matter of human rights.” (From the Declaration on Sexual Pleasure)
Our interpersonal relationships and also our sexuality are (still) marked by patriarchal relationships. Numerous testimonies about sexual violence indicate how deeply rooted misogyny still is in our society. At the same time, there is a lack of structures that would recognise sexual pleasure as an important source of comfort, satisfaction and empowerment, while prioritising persons, repressed in the society, in the process. Through collecting personal stories and collaboration with experts, the project will give space to sexual pleasure of women* and shed light on it from different points of view. A series of lecture-performances will inform the audience, and at the same time tackle the topics of sexual pleasure with different performing practices and strategies.
*Vaginismus is considered the most difficult sexual dysfunction in women. Vaginismus causes the pelvic floor muscles to spasm, which completely disables vaginal penetration even when a woman desires it.
Sex Education II:
Girls
Directed by Tjaša Črnigoj
Performers: Sendi Bakotić, Ana Marija Brđanović, Anja Sabol, Vanda Velagić
Creators: Ivan Botički (set design), Tijana Todorović (costume design)
Co-production: HNK Ivan pl. Zajc, Igralke Collective, VIDNE Institute
Partners: Slovensko mladinsko gledališče (Slovenian Youth Theatre) and Maska Ljubljana
Premiere: 12. 9. 2023
The documentary performance Girls is based on the testimonies and stories of women from three different generations: teenagers aged around seventeen, performers in their thirties and their grandmothers, aged around eighty. After Grandmothers (2020), this is the second collaboration between director Tjaša Črnigoj and the Rijeka-based Igralke Collective. This time, the artists tackle the theme of coming-of-agegrowing up and sexuality. They are interested in what it means for contemporary high school girls to “lose their virginity”,
whether they are afraid of unwanted pregnancies, and what empowers them in this respectarea. Also – – how do the seniors remember growing up, their first sexual experiences and their knowledge about sexuality at that time.
Through the personal stories of the women, the performance Girls charts the changing times and socio-political systems. In Croatia today, women’s reproductive and sexual rights are under serious threat and the question is: where are we headedgoing? Will the next generation grow up more and more like our grandmothers? The thematic connection of Girls the girls tto the lecture-performance Sex Education II: Fight, which reconstructs the struggle for women’s reproductive rights in Yugoslavia, forms a diptych.
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
