Adults Only: A Candid Conversation on Teenage Boys and Porn

By Natalie Claire King
28th September 2016

In Gonzo, four teenage boys will get up close and personal to candidly reveal their relationship with porn. They’ll divulge alarming and uncensored perspectives that will make your jaw drop, as we delve into a squeamish – but long overdue – conversation about how internet porn 
is affecting adolescent boys.

Edging back the covers further, we asked Director Clare Watson to share her insights on the process of working with what some may see as a taboo topic and the need to talk about pornography.

Art Series Hotel Group: What drew you to direct this piece of theatre?

Clare Watson: I first had the idea to make a work about teenage boys and porn about a year and a half ago. At St Martins we had just made two major works and one smaller art intervention all featuring teenage girls. It felt important to readdress the balance and hear from the boys. I was keenly aware from the girls that we’d worked with, that growing up in a pornified world was presenting them with some very particular challenges and opportunities. Through researching the subject area it became clear to me that teachers, psychologists, neurologists and cultural theorists all had a lot to say on the matter but there was a key voice missing. The voice of the young men who statistically are engaging with online adult content from the age of 11.

ASHG: How have you found the process, working with four male actors on what some may see as a taboo topic?

CW: I have adored working with Sol, Jack, Ari and Sam. They are smart, hilarious and generous humans and incredibly professional and generous collaborators.

We stepped in gently to the topic, in our first creative development week last July we spent time with video clips – Anaconda, Blurred Lines, Wrecking Ball, Slave 4U – to begin the discussion around sexualized imagery. It wasn’t until about a month later that the first verbatim text about porn entered the rehearsal room. And by that stage the cast of four were very comfortable with one another and the process.

The sections in the play that are about porn have all been sourced from interviews and focus groups and are not the cast’s own words but the rest of the conversation is straight out of impros from the rehearsal room.

I guess the ‘taboo’ was diffused very early on – in some ways the act of saying yes to being in the show did that – but we certainly had some blushing and giggling throughout the process. We did have to take the occasional double entendre break.

ASHG: Why do you think there is a need to talk about pornography?

CW: I think that online porn is something that a lot of adults fear. The moral panic around porn isn’t going to help us mitigate the potential risks. Talking about it in a calm, sex positive, non judgmental manner reduces the shame and taboo, and a conversation that is led by the young people who are most affected is timely and imperative.

ASHG: What have you learnt about the male perspective on pornography while working on this piece?

CW: Having worked with teenagers for the last twenty years, I’m keenly aware that they are often under-estimated. So it was no surprise to find that our teenage boys are media savvy viewers of pornography who can absolutely distinguish the difference between fact and fiction. They also have a great handle on the way stereotypes and tropes that are represented in porn are also represented more broadly across our media. Porn doesn’t exist in a bubble.

ASHG: What lasting message would you like the audience to be left with?

CW: Sex education is lacking for our young people and porn is, for some, filling an information vacuum. I’d like to see education around sexuality beginning much, much earlier and having a focus on pleasure, consent and respect. I really hope that we can drop the fear, set aside our outdated notions, trust our teenagers and listen to them as we engage in a really interesting conversation as sexual citizens.

Book now to see Gonzo.