Taskmaster meets Sex Education in joyful, interactive comedy about consent and queer intimacy at Melbourne Fringe Festival.
What if talking about consent could be funny, awkward, sexy and deeply human? Following acclaimed seasons at Auckland Pride Festival and Adelaide Fringe, award-winning New Zealand theatremaker Hamish Annan brings his interactive solo performance Before We Begin to Melbourne Fringe Festival for its Melbourne premiere season from 7 to 11 October at the Quilt Room-Trades Hall.
Part live date, part social experiment and part comedy show, Before We Begin invites audiences into an evening of escalating interactions where every moment is negotiated in real time.
Through flirting, dancing, conversation, audience participation and a series of increasingly intimate invitations, Hamish and the audience navigate consent together, exploring what happens when we slow down, listen and ask.
“Most of us aren’t very good at intimacy,” Hamish said. “Our sex education teaches us about hormones, hair and how not to get pregnant, but very little about healthy relationships, communication or consent. I think we like to think we’re better at consent than we actually are, especially in gay and queer spaces.”
“The work is inspired by my own non-consensual sexual experience, which I go into during the show. I felt compelled to share what happened but didn’t want it to be yet another serious conversation. I really wanted it to be digestible and accessible.”
Rather than approaching consent through education or advocacy, Hamish uses humour, vulnerability and audience participation to create an experience that feels more like a shared adventure than a lecture. It’s sexy decision making with strangers while being naughty and, maybe, nude. There will also, most definitely, be flirting.
The production arrives at a time when conversations around consent and modern dating continue to evolve. Through awkwardness and laughter Before We Begin shows what happens when people practise asking and respect boundaries in real time.
Nothing happens without permission. Every interaction is optional. Yet audiences shouldn’t mistake optional for tame.
Audiences from Auckland Pride and Adelaide Fringe described the show as some of the safest interactive theatre they had ever experienced, despite its playful and provocative nature.
“I have had audience members stay back after the show and share their own experiences with me,” Hamish said. “It’s unbelievable to think that so many people went through exactly what I did, but rarely is it expressed as openly as it is through the show.”
Based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Hamish is an award-winning actor, writer, voice artist, acting coach and theatremaker whose work explores human connection and participation. His previous solo work Access won the NZ Fringe Touring Award and received critical acclaim across New Zealand and Australia.
Developed alongside dramaturg Dan Goodwin, lighting designer Rae Longshaw-Park and technical manager Michael “Skippy” Goodwin, Before We Begin continues Hamish’s distinctive practice of creating participatory experiences that blur the line between performer and audience.
