“I REMEMBER YOU talking about this,” says my friend Sarah when I tell her about my new play Fluff, “like, 15 years ago. You told me you wanted to try it, dancing behind glass. Not the windows, like, not as a sex worker, but in a peepshow. In the Red Light district.”
I do not remember this particular conversation, but it seems plausible. Although I wasn’t familiar with the term ‘sex work’ then, I have always been interested in it. At 15, I read Pamela Des Barres’ I’m With The Band, and wanted to be a groupie. Then, I wanted to be a stripper in Japan – because Courtney Love had been a stripper in Japan, and in those years she embodied, together with Brody Dalle, the in-yer-face, unapologetic, loud female I aspired to be. Four years later, I sent photographs of myself – platinum blonde, half-shaved head, punk tattoos, awkwardly posing in pink lingerie – to an Amsterdam strip club and never heard back. I forgot about sex work for a while.
And then I moved to Ireland.
Met with confusion
I moved here to pursue a full-time MA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin, and ended up working in a strip club for some time – while also successfully completing my degree, and another one after that, my most recent academic achievement being having been accepted for a PhD at Oxford University. I must be, therefore, somewhat intelligent. I have also danced for strangers in exchange for money, have let drunk men put five euro notes in my underwear while hanging upside down a pole. It’s not that confusing – nevertheless, without fail, I am met with confusion whenever I tell anyone.
This confusion is the result of a moral judgement, a prevalent stigma surrounding sex work and those who choose to sell sex for a living. Sex workers cannot be intelligent; intelligent people cannot be sex workers. You don’t belong here, you’re too clever. What is your real job? But surely you don’t need to do this? These questions may be be rooted in a genuine interest, but they are not innocent. Sex work is work – while it’s evidently not ‘like any other job’, the infamous ‘need’ is implied in its ontology: it is a job, and we live in a capitalist society where work is a necessity. I did not need to work as a stripper. It was a choice.
Fluff is about choice. It is also about agency, bodily autonomy, and prejudice.
Amplifying voices
In the play, we see Lola and Carli wait, hustle, and analyse patrons, sometimes serious, often witty. Ultimately, the play is an attempt to amplify sex workers’ voices. It explores contemporary perspectives on sex work in Ireland through the eyes of two Dublin strippers. ‘Sex workers’ itself is a complex term: someone working the streets will have a vastly different experience from an escort taking in calls for €300 an hour, whose experience will be different again from an ‘exotic dancer’ selling champagne and lap dances in a strip club, like Lola and Carli in Fluff.
The piece explores these differences, the stigma faced by sex workers on a daily basis, and the confusion between sex work and sex trafficking – a common conflation in anti-prostitution, abolitionist narratives –, from the perspectives of Lola and Carli, while also giving the audience an insight into the mechanics of a strip club. While it is a political play – I think somehow, everything I write is political: if I didn’t care for something, I wouldn’t be writing about it – Fluff is not a lecture. You may notice some Brechtian influences, but there will be no placards on stage.
Instead, there will be a pole, eight inch heels, and pink acrylics.
Directed by Liam Halligan, the play will be visually striking and dynamic. We’ve Denis Clohessy on sound too, and without wanting to reveal too much, I can say the play’s soundscape is in perfect tandem with the visual, on-stage storytelling, which will be further amplified by Eoin Lennon’s lighting design. I’m delighted we get to premiere Fluff in the Smock Alley’s Black Box, as it’s the perfect venue for this intimate, strip club setting which simultaneously offers the audience a glimpse into this typically concealed aspect of Irish society. On stage, several patrons will make their appearance – all performed by actor Aaron Lockhart, who played Tomo in award-winning 2020 drama Herself – as well as Dublin strippers Lola and Carli, played by myself and co-actor Shir Madness, an amazing performer with strip club experience of her own. Fluff will be authentic – it’s based on real life experience, interviews with sex workers, and stories hitherto untold.
I wrote Fluff’s first scene in February 2020 , and after being selected for Fishamble and Dublin Fringe Festival’s ‘Big Ambitions’ partnership, continued to develop the play under the mentorship of Fishamble’s Gavin Kostick. Now, two years later, the play seems more relevant than ever. The Nordic Model – which criminalises the buying of sex and was implemented here in 2017 – is under review; a report documenting the violation of sex workers’ human rights in Ireland was published by Amnesty International this January; in June, Belgium was the first country in Europe to fully decriminalise sex work; and only last week, research into the experiences of street sex workers in Ireland was published by GOSHH and the University of Limerick.
Things are changing. Conversations are happening. Fluff is an attempt to contribute to these conversations – while also giving the audience a good night out, at the end of which, hopefully, you’ll go home with some new insights.
FLUFF premieres at Smock Alley Theatre, Black Box from September 20 – 24, as part of Dublin Fringe Festival 2022.
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