Navigating the Complex World of Sex Education: Six Characters, Infinite Perspectives 🦜🐝
Sex education in Britain is often a topic of heated debate. The attempt to be inclusive and informative, whilst age-appropriate, without offending or startling anyone. Our opinions on students’ education are often coloured by our own individual experiences and preferences. There’s so much fear. It’s complicated.
Milo McCarthy (Billy) and Sandra Belarbi (Maisy) in Birds and Bees. Photo by Chris Saunders
It would be arrogant of me to attempt to simplify it and preach my politics in one hour of theatrical delight ‘dahling’. Absolutely not. I want to embrace the messy nuances and present some sticky questions about sex education. I don’t want to offend anyone. I don’t have all the answers. I can ask some of the questions, in a theatrical way that excites and empowers an audience of young people. I want to present six characters, all with a different experience of sex education.
It’s my hope that every pupil will see themselves on stage, and through those six characters will feel encouraged to explore the topics with their teachers in a safe and creative way. I feel really honoured to be making a piece of theatre that will tour schools. Really honoured, and really scared. I was not a kind audience member as a teenager, easily distracted, mostly unimpressed, and highly tuned to the slightest sniff of anything patronising. I was hungry for something real, something live, something that mattered. So now, years later, I’m really excited to have the opportunity to have a go at making something like that.
Birds and Bees was made into a film in 2020 and toured across the UK in 2023.
