Esther Shannon spent years fighting to protect sex workers from themselves.
It wasn’t until the early 2000s, after the self-described radical feminist was put on a government project with the women she was at odds with, that her mindset began to shift.
“There is a tendency within radical feminism to have a very strong opposition to sex work,” explains Shannon, seated in a busy Mount Pleasant coffee shop. “I had an opinion of sex workers that was very narrow: I saw them only as targets of male violence and exploitation […] Then I got to actually meet some sex workers and they were in the midst of building a political movement for their rights. They were taking action to change their lives, and as a feminist that’s what we want women to do […] so I concluded that I wanted to support [them].”
Now a longtime ally, Shannon will celebrate that journey in a groundbreaking new theatre production, The Hooker Monologues, running now until March 13 at the Firehall Arts Centre.
Inspired by playwright Eve Ensler’s renowned Vagina Monologues, The Hooker Monologues places 10 active and former sex workers, as well as their advocates, on stage to share their candid, powerful and humorous true accounts.
“It’s a lot of memorization,” laughs Carmen Shakti, seated next to her. “Wish me luck.”
Shakti (her stage name) has worked as an escort and Tantric sexuality specialist for years. Many of her clients, she says, are men who have never experienced sexual intimacy, or have mental and physical barriers that interfere with their enjoyment of sex.
In fact, Shakti herself first came to the industry in need of help.
“I started out – probably unusually – as a client before I became a provider, so under the current laws I’d be a criminal,” she points out, referring to Canada’s amended prostitution laws, which made the buying of sex illegal in 2014. “But I wasn’t then. And the experience was very healing and very positive for me, and I came out of it wanting to do the same for other people.”
The demure, salt-and-pepper-haired spokesperson will be recreating three snapshots from her life as part of her performance: a comical oral encounter tellingly entitled “Coke Dick”, a dream sequence about stigma, and a session with a client who had fears of intimacy.
Brought together by community advocate Raven Bowen, a former Prostitution Alternatives Counselling & Education (PACE) Society director, other members of the diverse, all-female cast include exotic dancers, a dominatrix, as well as the sister of one of Robert Pickton’s victims.
“It seems sex workers’ issues are really popular right now,” says Shakti. “[But] there’s still not a lot of venues for our stories. I like the idea of getting different perspectives out there about sex workers, so that we’re seen as full people rather than stereotypes and dehumanized objects,” she continues. “And, ultimately, I hope that it will help the movement towards the decriminalization of sex work.”
As a self-employed, indoor sex worker, Shakti explains that she feels she encounters less stigma than those who work in the industry’s more high-profile fields. Conversely, some of the show’s initial participants felt too uncomfortable to continue once they realized the amount of exposure it would entail.
“We started out with about 20 [cast members] and some people were anxious – understandably – because stigma against sex workers is immense,” explains Shannon, “You know, if you come out as a sex worker you have a lot of legitimate fears about how that will affect your relationships, or if you’re in a straight job, or a square job. There’s just a lot of opportunity for people to beat up on sex workers, emotionally.”
“And it’s not even big enough,” Shannon adds later, of the show. “We wanted to get at least one man and, you know, collectively we have a lot of connections in all areas of sex work, but we couldn’t convince a man to join the cast, so that feels like a gap.”
Despite the road blocks, though, the largely amateur production has been spurred on since the fall of 2014 by the support of local grants and donations, as well the volunteer efforts of theatre professionals such as dramaturge Camille Gingras and director Mindy Parfitt.
“We came into it with passion and no idea what we were doing,” says Shannon, with a chuckle, “and we lucked out by getting Mindy, a professional director. At last week’s rehearsal she was just saying to us that we now have these stories, and we have to ownthese stories, so that when we’re performing, the audience understands really intimately that we are giving them stories about our lives.”
• The Hooker Monologues runs March 9-13 at the Firehall Arts Centre (280 E Cordova). Tickets $20; FirehallArtsCentre.ca. Some dates already sold out.
