NARCOSEXUALS /Trouble Festival (TV serial, 2023)

This episode is about Dries Verhoeven and his new performance The NarcoSexuals. In his latest work, Dries investigates the ins and outs of sexual drug use, a phenomenon that is gaining popularity especially among gay men. Forty years after the start of the gay liberation, we’re entering a ‘narco-sexual revolution’, even though this current liberation is invisible to the outside world. What pushes people to even risk their own lives? How different are they allowed to be?

Dries Verhoeven is a theatre maker and visual artist. He creates installations, performances and happenings in museums, on location and in the public spaces of cities. On the boundary between performance and installation art, he critically evaluates the relationships between the spectators, performers, everyday reality and art. The spectator is directly involved in the work or given the opportunity to steer his or her own experiences.

Dive into the out-of-time space of drugs and sex combined.

Scrolling through their phones they go in search of sex, sex like they’ve never had before, sex beyond the imaginable. Horny and determined they get on their bikes, a phial of GHB or a bag of 3mmc or something in their pockets. Disobeying the request for social distancing, giving the health cult the finger, rebelling against the loneliness that is lurking all the time.

They meet on a couch in a random living room somewhere in town. They snuggle up, they talk and talk, they fuck each other to kingdom come, sometimes they faint, in each other’s arms, they take care of each other.

Concept: Dries Verhoeven

Performance: Bráulio Bandeira, Matteo Bifulco, Tamar Blom, Vincent Clavaguera, Wojciech Grudziński, Estefano Romani, Barnaby Savage

Movement material developed in collaboration with the performers

Sound design: Thijs van Vuure

Dramaturgy: Hellan Godee & Miguel Melgares

Assistance: Marte Boneschansker

Internship text/direction: Hendrik de Pecker

Technique: Roel Evenhuis, Peer Thielen

Set dresser: Eveline Didderen

Production: ‘n More – Ellen van Bunnik, Lise van den Hout, Thijs de Bruijn, Jitske Weijand

Internship production: Maaike Postma

Brussels edition: in co-presentation with KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Charleroi danse and Les Halles de Schaerbeek. With the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Embassy and of the Performing Arts Fund NL

A production by: Studio Dries Verhoeven.

More information about the performance: https://driesverhoeven.com/en/project...

“Dries Verhoeven weaves an ingenious ambiguity into his performance The NarcoSexuals. The installation confronts you, non-stop, with your own prejudices […] A ceaseless ebb and flow of beauty and melancholy.”

Verhoeven wants to start a public conversation with The NarcoSexuals about the meaning of chemsex, sex under the influence of drugs, a phenomenon that is especially popular among gay men. But his intentions are broader: he also wants to talk about the relationship between lust and intimacy, and about the fact that where the gay movement used to want to be visible, the chemsex scene flourishes mainly in secret.

"The NarcoSexuals strips bare the darkest layers of our society. We are granted a momentary glimpse beneath the sanitised surface, beyond the world where we’re presumed to be health-aware, sane, high achievers. This production takes us far deeper, into a realm of nagging unease, where wired bodies chase happiness, wavering between madness and meaning."

An interview by Jowi Schmitz (Trouw) with Dries Verhoeven during the rehearsals of The NarcoSexuals (12 May 2022)

“Verhoeven masterfully translates a sexual indulgence that normally takes place behind closed doors, into the public realm and makes it relatable. Without moral judgement, but with questions about its necessity.”

Marijn v/d Jagt in De Groene (28 Sept 2022)