Tricky Business

Jack Skelley locates the line between authenticity and performance in the new immersive theater performance “Session.”

By Jack SkelleyAugust 29, 2024

SESSION, Gattopardo, Glendale, Sept 20–22, 2024.

You enter a room in “The Angus Street Hotel.” A dozen or so chairs cluster close to the bed. You take a seat. In burst two young performers, and this comic drama ignites. “Immersive” theater can be a penetrating experience, but this immediately goes deeper than usual. In Session—written and performed by Lily Lady and Siena Foster-Soltis and directed by Frank Demma—you are eyeballs-to-boobies with two clever sex workers on an emotional thrill ride.

Sex—or its heightened overtones—offers built-in frisson. So, you’re already electrified. The femme performers are (un)dressed for the occasion, so that’s obviously fucking hot. But Session stimulates on many more levels.

For one thing, there’s the performance: it’s not “acting.” The vibe between Lady (whose recent collection of verse, NDA, deftly penetrates the conflicting boundaries of sex work) and Foster-Soltis (a playwright/director with Conjugal Visit theater company and the creator of the recent acclaimed stage adaptation of my book Fear of Kathy Acker) is so real that the term “authentic” rings hollow. Co-orbiting like electrons, they finish each other’s thoughts/lines in split-second riffing that (again) feels unrehearsed. There is nothing “staged” about it … though it must have taken time and care to choreograph. It’s hilarious … except when it’s scary.

The pair yap and rap about Eros ads and Diet Dr. Pepper–flavored Lip Smackers. In perpetual motion, and bonding through doing doubles, they romp and pillow-fight-pose for selfies. The action suddenly swerves and re-swerves. The comedy darkens, and the dialogue keeps pace. Along the way come quickie observations such as the paradox of “powerful” men who crave humiliation.

In fact, men are in for a rough ride in Session, verbally and otherwise.

SIENA: Hotel products are poison, forever chemicals!

LILY: Isn’t it nice that something wants to be inside you forever?

SIENA: I don’t want anything inside me, ever!

Ultimately, the plot goes surprisingly, philosophically meta. It’s as if this entire Session has been performed for a demanding, omniscient director/client/god, or perhaps for the duo’s own consciences. I can’t reveal much more without spoiling, but the entertainment richly deepens into a meditation on authenticity.

The sex workers of Session confront their audience—and themselves—with an unsettling question: in a world that seems mostly transactional and performative, is there room for genuine intimacy and gratified desire?

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Photo by Jesey Garay.

LARB Short Takes live event reviews are published in partnership with the nonprofit Online Journalism Project and the Independent Review Crew.