Replacing butt plugs with showstoppers and gangbangs with kicklines is the aim of a partnership between celebrated New York and Los Angeles theatre companies.
Steve Cosson, artistic director of The Civilians, a theatre collective from New York City, has been conducting interviews over the last few weeks with performers, directors, and a few writers in the porn community to craft a theatrical spectacular out of their insights and stories.
I’m thinking it should be called “All That Jizz.”
“We won’t have anything approaching a clue until we’ve read all the interviews this fall and locked ourselves away to discuss,” said Cosson, whose company was commissioned by L.A.’s Center Theatre Group.
Cosson and his team have met with directors Chi Chi LaRue and John Stagliano and have visited several porn sets to absorb the sights, smells, and dramatic possibilities of the porn world.
“We expect the show to be a ground-breaking event,” Cosson said.
Bess Wohl, who will write the book for the musical, actually held a light on a shoot directed by Eli Cross recently.
One cannot help but think fondly of the theatre created by the Depression-era Works Progress Administration, in which plays were created around the lives of working people, or the writing of Studs Terkel, whose books were based on interviews with simple, hardworking folk.
But the joint effort between The Civilians and CTG will be, according to Cosson, “the first major musical about porn.”
Cosson’s research has uncovered that many porn performers have backgrounds in theatre. That said, casting for the musical will probably be limited to the ranks of The Civilians or Center Theatre Group, which often stages its plays at Culver City’s Kirk Douglas Theatre.
“Most of the performers will need to be musical theater performers who can sing, act, and dance,” Cosson said. “But we’re definitely open to considering performers from the porn world.”
As the musical is still in its larval stage – The Civilians will return to New York shortly and discuss the theatrical possibilities of what they’ve learned on their listening tour, then attend the Adult Entertainment Expo in January for more interviews and writing – Cosson predicts that the musical will not be about anyone in particular but instead feature characters who are amalgams of the observations gathered from the interviews.
“I’m guessing it won’t be documentary style with, say, a character named ‘Nina Hartley,'” he said. “It will most likely be fictionalized characters taking a lot of inspiration from real life. And I imagine it will be the kind of thing that people in the business will recognize a lot.”
In that the production involves a theatre company from somewhere else, the L.A. Times devoted a generous amount of space to the porn musical, saying “Thank goodness there are no MPAA ratings for the live theater.”
Previously on Porn Valley Observed: Madison Young turns your guilty masturbation into art; David Aaron Clark – “I am not Phil Collins”; The Process
See also: Stage musical on L.A. porn industry is in the works, The Civilians, Center Theatre Group
"Let me see those jizz hands!"