Just Don’t Do It Beside Ourselves Collective and Ruth Penfold-Mounce
Event details
It’s 1999 at Christian summer camp and youth leaders Trish and Tash are giving the ‘save
yourself until marriage’ talk to the teenage girls. No inappropriate clothing, ‘safe’ dance moves and valuing virginity above all else is a script they know well, and one which Tash can deliver with personal zeal.
When Trish starts to rebel, however, Tash’s repressive tactics go into overdrive and the ground opens up beneath them. Literally. It will take an epic journey into a mythical realm, a surprising spiritual encounter and some singing vulvas to reconsider everything they thought they knew about sex, faith and friendship.
Based on the performers’ personal experiences, American purity culture and an ancient
matriarchal myth, Just Don’t Do It is a ‘bonkers yet touching’ theatre debut. There will be hymns. There will be bizarre rituals. There will be vagina puppets.
Following the performance, Ruth Penfold-Mounce of the University of York will chair a Q&A session.
Suitable for age 14+.
Please note that the times are different to those advertised in the Festival brochure.
About the performers
Dr Ruth Penfold-Mounce is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at the University of York. Her research interests lie in crime, popular culture and death with her most recent book Death, The Dead and Popular Culture published by Emerald in 2018. Ruth is the principal Editor of Emerald Studies in Death and Culture, leads the Death and Culture Network (DaCNet) and is keen user of twitter @DeathandCulture. She is passionate about getting the public to engage with academic research as well as social issues and ideas more broadly and annually contributes to the York Festival of Ideas.
Beside Ourselves Collective
Formed in 2017, Beside Ourselves Collective is a devised theatre collaboration between London International School of Performing Arts (LISPA) trained Kate Mounce and Fourth Monkey graduate Eleanor Young. They explore themes of faith and embodiment through the mediums of clowning, improvised sketch comedy, homemade dance routines, puppetry, cabaret and mythological archetypes.
Partners
