February is referred to as “the month of love” – a time to celebrate the cherished bond between two people. But the Valentine’s season often fails to acknowledge the most important person you will ever have an everlasting love with – yourself.
Jerk It is an interactive performance piece featuring actors reading “real masturbation stories” to a live audience. The stories are gathered anonymously through crowd-sourced first-hand accounts of various self-pleasuring experiences. The concept’s producers are referring to it as their “most self-indulgent project yet.”
“This event is a celebration of self-love,” says co-creator Cory Thibert, 24.
Tony Adams, Madeleine Boyes-Manseau and Thibert conceived this piece with the desire of exposing people to new experiences “that shake them out of their comfort zone.”
Jerk It performer Stephanie Vicente says, “The audience should expect some laughs, definitely some awkward moments, and not run-of-the-mill theatre, that’s for sure.”
Jerk It will be performed at the Arts Court Theatre on Daly Avenue. It’s part of the fifth annual Undercurrents Festival, which features original works by local artists. This is the first year Undercurrents will be produced by the Ottawa Fringe Festival.
The Ottawa Fringe Festival is an open-access event meaning that there are low barriers to registration and any artist is welcome to participate. Every year dozens of acts are chosen through a lottery to ensure an impartial selection.
Communications manager Gregg Clark says 100 per cent of the ticket sales go directly to the artists. He attributes the Fringe Festival’s success in recent years to raw local talent.
“Oftentimes you have to just go back and look at what’s in the program,” Clark says. “When there’s a strong program full of appealing artists, that’s when tickets sell.”
Clark says the Jerk It premiere held last year was an “enormous success.”
“It was amazing! We didn’t expect people to jump on it. We just kind of expected our friends to come,” says Adams. “There was this nervous excitement in the room – kind of like the first time.”
Thibert emphasizes that they are not just looking for “typical jerk-off” stories. He considers the best anecdotes to be the ones with the ability to conceptualize the emotions surrounding the actual experience itself.
“We really want the ones that are stories about masturbation but also ones with elements of good storytelling, in that they’re about something else, as well,” says Boyes-Manseau.
After reading the submissions, they were pleasantly surprised with the variety of content. The stories were not only sexy, but also awkward and hilarious. Some were even quite touching – in more ways than one.
The creators say the explicit honesty in Jerk It creates a relaxed and non-judgmental environment. The shameless, ironic and risqué subject matter encourages the audience to open up and blow off some steam.
The booze helps too.
“The environment creates this feeling of togetherness. It’s like we’re all transported to sixth-grade health class again but with more details this time around,” Adams says to the group nodding and laughing in agreement.
Jerk It runs from Feb. 19-21 with shows beginning Thursday night at 8:15. Community residents are being encouraged to share their stories online by sending them to maycantheatre@gmail.com. Stories can be sent anonymously by logging into the provided e-mail: rubitmaycan@gmail.com (password: everybody). Admission is “pay what you can” at the door.