Will Adamsdale, Rob Beckett, Danny Brown, Adam Buxton, Nick Frost, Phill Jupitus, Miles Jupp, Funmbi Otomayo, John-Luke Roberts, Sunil Patel, Romesh Ranganathan, Arthur Smith, Mark Thomas, Thom Tuck, Phil Wang and Liam Williams are among the comedians who will be performing Manwatching at the Royal Court Theatre in London. Written by an anonymous woman and performed by an unprepared man Manwatching is directed by Royal Court Associate Director Lucy Morrison with Lighting Design by Jamie Spirito.
Manwatching is a funny, frank, and occasionally explicit insight into heterosexual female desire, read out by a man. The show begins with a male comedian being given a script they have never seen before. They read the script out loud, sight unseen, in front of an audience. This is a show about what one woman thinks about when she thinks about sex with men. Audiences will not know who is apearing until the night.
Commenting on the project the anonymous female writer states: “I have been thinking about what it means to be objectified, and whether or not that is really tied to desire or power. Although men are objectified by other men, I was at a loss to think of many examples of men being objectified by women, and the examples I could think of were quite complicated - frequently involving the man's profession rather than appearance (in Sex and the City, for example, men are usually referred to in shorthand by whatever job it is they do rather than how they look or act), or their dominance was the source of objectification. Even though many women desire men, the most basic elements of that desire seemed oddly unexplored. So I thought, who better to give the words of a woman desiring men to, than the voice of a man, as it's so much more comfortable and familiar for us to hear about desire through the male perspective?”
Manwatching runs from 10 – 20 May 2017 in the Jerwood Theatre Upstairs. Tickets here. It will also be performed by Tommy Tiernan at MAC, Belfast on 16 June 7.45pm. Further tour dates to be announced.
Read a review of James Acaster doing this in Edinburgh here.
