Archive for Kink

Gag Writer: A Five‑Star Showcase of Wit, Warmth and Total Command

 

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⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Melissa Todd has lived a life that most people couldn’t make up, and Gag Writer turns that life into a lively hour. She’s warm, funny, and very good at pulling a room along with her.

It’s not the show I thought I was walking into, I’ll admit. I expected more exploration of the psychology of clients, the why behind the fantasies. Those moments are there and they’re genuinely intriguing, but they surface briefly before the next anecdote takes over.

Still, the audience was with her from start to finish. She has that easy rapport and never forces the laugh. One reenacted story with an unexpectedly talented audience volunteer, had the room in stitches. Beneath the humor, there’s a consistent theme about trust, honesty, and negotiated boundaries, which gives the show some grounding. It hints at what wider society might learn from the bdsm world.

The history snippets are a welcome texture too. I was intrigued by her account of how she entered the world of kink and her early interest in spanking and initiation as she herself was spanked at a Soho shop selling magazines devoted to that subject.

If I have a reservation, it’s only that I wanted more, more depth, not because what was there wasn’t good, it was, but because the deeper threads were so compelling. I loved here explanation of why some people craved pain, for example. That’s a critique born of interest rather than disappointment.

Gag Writer is funny, engaging, and refreshingly non-judgmental. It earns its audience and leaves you thinking after the laughs.

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Inside MOMME DOMME: A Mistressclass in Power and Provocation

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Some artists send a press release. Blemme Fatale sent a warning shot wrapped in velvet. MOMME DOMME arrives at the Fringe already humming with danger — part ritual, part trapdoor, part love letter to women who refuse to be tidied up for institutional comfort. It’s a show that doesn’t just perform power; it handles it, tests it, breaks it open to see what’s inside.

Across London, Toronto and Jamaica, this team has been building a world where pedagogy becomes theatre, theatre becomes seduction, and seduction becomes a political act. Their answers came back with the same energy as the work itself: sharp, funny, unbothered, and absolutely certain of the stakes.

Below is our full conversation.

You describe MOMME DOMME as a “mistressclass that becomes an artwork.” When you first conceived that shift — from lesson to entrapment — what problem in contemporary performance were you trying to expose?

It’s sort of sadistic how much we love a bait and switch. When Love Island dropped Casa Amor on us. Everyone swears they’d win on Traitors. When Michelle and Emma were fake evicted on Big Brother. This is a dopamine tried and tested bait and switch.

I wanted to expose how easily institutions lure you in and censor you swiftly and how that is a gag order on risks and is flattening the cultural landscape. They’ll own you to do what they please, to make you more palatable or to shelf you.

And when the instittuon is making these decisions you can absolve yourself.

I want the audience to relish in the entertainment your the decisions produce (please do have a good time) but own how degrading and exploitative your actions can be. I want the audience to feel that bait‑and‑switch in their own bodies, so the feeling of vouyerism lingers well after the show.

The show pulls from Kirsta Kelech’s Ladies Lounge at MONA, The Slumflower’s self‑love movement, and Chantal Heide’s dating coaching. These are very different cultural ecosystems. What made those three strands speak to each other in your head?

Powerful, unapologetic, cunty women.

I discovered the lawsuit against Kirsta Kelch’s Ladies Lounge at MONA in Australia because it was a women’s only exhibit and it was so hot how they extended the artwork by sashaying out of court in stylish blazers and red lipsticks.

Cunt. I came across Chiedera Eggerue (The Slumflower) and her #SaggyBoobsMatter, provoking and catching one podcast bro at a time in their double standards.

Cunt. I was entranced by Chantal Heide’s dating coaching, defending how Body Count Doesn’t Matter, not even leaving a beat for her words to be misconstrued and for misinformation to spread.

Cunt. Three completely different rooms, a gallery, a podcast, a live stream, each woman holding a boundary which they’re prepared to defend till queendom come for their sake and mine.

Each night you bring in a fresh cast drawn from “clubs, collectives and covens” across Toronto and Edinburgh. What changes most when the room is filled with new women, and what never changes at all?

Personal boundaries, what history they’re bringing in with them, how fast they trust the postcards, the questions asked about BDSM based on experience (we’ve got femdoms to actors) and levels of surrendment to the show. Whether you just want to drop the aubergine gently or thrash it with your heels to crack it right open. We’re the last show of the night so don’t worry needing a dry stage immediately afterwards.

What never changes is the architecture. “Different women, same architecture, varying result,” that’s actually a line in the script. The mistressclass is pretty fixed. With twelves scenes, twelve lessons from “How To Spot A Sub” to “How To Pick A Fake Name”. We keep the onboarding ritual and safe words consistent across all shows so there is structure and a safety framework.

The press release mentions “online rape academies” as a provocation. That’s a stark phrase. How do you navigate referencing that digital violence without reproducing its harm onstage?

The show is interested in the pervasive sense of surveillance and control of women that drive exploitative characters from Andrew Tate, to pick up coaches to meta‑glasses content harvesters to rape academies.

The show is a call to action for what women can do once they’ve clocked; they are not safe dating and they finally mourn the fantasy. My abundant mindset is too clear to gatekeep the world of female domination for any longer.

MOMME DOMME uses BDSM language to expose “the architecture of exclusion and exploitation.” What did you discover about power — theatrical, social, or sexual — once you started working with that vocabulary?

From aftercare to hard limits, BDSM already has a vocabulary for negotiating power out loud, which most institutions don’t. You don’t negotiate, you sign on the dotted line cos you’re replaceable. Once I put the gallery, the artist, the audience and the domme in that same vocabulary, the exploitation got very easy to see, because suddenly everyone had to declare what they wanted instead of hiding behind “it’s just how things are done.” It became clear how the mindset of an understood divinity and how accepting your matriarchal inheritance can get you what you want. Don’t ask, dont get.

You’re based between London, Toronto and Jamaica, and your work is rooted in Pan‑African oral traditions and the Seven Generations Principle. Where does MOMME DOMME sit inside that lineage of storytelling?

Stories are the oldest currency in the world. When you’re lost or down on your luck, stories garner response and can shift realities. MOMME DOMME is a ritual passed down and rebuilt each night with a new set of women, the way oral tradition has always worked. What gets carried forward is our responsibility even if that may be tips for your next sub, trick or paypig.

The show contains themes of sexual violence, coercive control, surveillance and institutional abuse. How do you build an environment where audiences can sit with those realities without being overwhelmed by them?

We weave these themes together with British pop culture TV shows, high‑energy lipsyncs and gag‑worthy soap opera moments to allow the audience to settle into the familiar as they discover the sex‑positive world of MOMME DOMME. The material is a lot, it’s spicy, it’s vulnerable, it’s vulgar, some may say uncouth but we priortise care and wellbeing to the people we bring into this world.

Peggy Mitchell, your “aspiring institutional darling,” leads the audience into How To Be A Domme 101. What does Peggy let you say — or critique — that you couldn’t express through a more conventional narrator?

Peggy gets to be wrong by looking away when she shouldn’t, and that lets me critique institutional complicity from inside it rather than pointing at it from a safe distance. A conventional narrator tells you the gallery is exploitative like it’s their first day on Earth. Like they’re brand new. It’s a worthy cause, bringing the end of the patriarchy but to what extent is it justified or even possible when it’s bankrolled by these highly problematic institutions compromising your belief that we’re not free until we’re all free. Can BP or Shell sponsor the matriarchy if they also promise to cover the AC?

MOMME DOMME is described as “chronically online” and “hyper‑local.” In practice, how do you balance the internet’s speed and chaos with the slower, embodied rituals you weave into the performance?

Thank Goddess for the internet. From TikTok tarot readings to Are We Dating the Same Guy facebook groups and all the discourse in between. The ritual gives us a pace where fast paced sound can complement slowly putting on lipstick, looking directly at the audience. The chaos of the show is rooted in the audio, and the tasks allow for the women to set the intentional speed of the room.

You’ve been shortlisted for the UNTAPPED Award 2025 and previously won Most Innovative Bite at Bitesize Festival. With MOMME DOMME now premiering at Toronto Fringe and Edinburgh Fringe, what feels newly possible for you artistically?

We want to do work rooted in pedagogy and process with breathing room for interpretation and less dictation. Where natural storytellers can shine. Toronto let us test whether the form could hold with women who’d never met each other before curtain. Edinburgh is the first time I get to see if it travels, whether the same architecture works with a completely different city’s clubs, collectives and covens. In terms of my relationship with cultural recognition, I have turned my attention to leadership by starting the Binge Fringe x Blemme Fatale Productions Black Performers Award in 2025 which returns for Edinburgh Fringe 2026!

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Padlocked!: Comedy, Vulnerability and a Man Left Waiting

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Late‑night Fringe shows often promise chaos, provocation or shock value, but Padlocked! aims for something more interesting: a collision between gay kink and the mundane pressures of everyday life. Zinc Simian’s debut production opens in Guy’s bedroom, where he’s preparing for a Grindr hook‑up with the elusive Fabio. He secures himself with a timed padlock restraint, expecting Fabio to arrive and release him after a bdsm session. But Fabio never shows. And with no easy way out, Guy is left alone — physically trapped, emotionally exposed, and forced to confront the parts of his life he’s been avoiding.

The press release describes the piece as “sex‑positive, life‑negative,” and that’s a neat summary of the tone. What begins as a setup for farce quickly shifts into something more psychological. Guy’s phone rings relentlessly: family, work, neighbours, even a malfunctioning Alexa. The interruptions pile up, and the comedy comes from the absurdity of trying to manage ordinary responsibilities while locked in a situation designed for intimacy rather than practicality. But beneath the humour is a clear thread about avoidance, self‑image and the stories we tell ourselves to justify our choices.

Joseph N. Alberts, who has Fringe experience stretching back to 1998, gives a committed performance as Guy. The nudity is handled professionally and feels integral to the character’s vulnerability rather than gratuitous. He carries the piece with energy and sincerity, and there’s bravery in how fully he leans into Guy’s discomfort — physical and emotional. Mary‑Jane H. Pinch’s script, inspired by real events, has sharp observations and a strong central idea, but I found myself wanting a deeper excavation of Guy’s motivations. The play gestures toward reckoning, but stops just short of fully exploring the emotional terrain it opens up.

Padlocked! has plenty to recommend it. It’s intelligent, engaging, and refreshingly honest about the messiness of adult life — queer or otherwise. And for late‑night audiences at theSpace Triplex, it offers exactly what the Fringe does best: something bold, unusual, and willing to take risks.

Reviewed by Pat Harrington

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