Who In Austin Doesn’t Have Time For a Quickie?

The Producers of BedPost Confessions:
Weaver, Gillis, Smythe, Martina

So there’s the big event, and then everything’s – definably – anticlimactic, right?

No, don’t sweat the metaphor – let’s look at what’s really going on here: The popular BedPost Confessions series of erotic readings is about to inaugurate a spin-off. The main series, founded in Austin in 2010 and bringing its sex-positive enlightenment to The North Door once a month, is produced by Sadie Smythe, Mia Martina, Rosie Weaver, and Julie Gillis. We recently asked Gillis about this newest part of the project.

“It’s called BedPost Quickies,” she told us, “and it’s an open mic for anyone who’s interested in doing five minutes or less on sexuality, gender, orientation, and more – but maybe they weren’t sure about submitting a big piece for the regular show, or they don’t have any performance experience. So this is a new way for people to get their ideas out there.”

Often, when something like BedPost Confessions starts out, it might begin as all open-mic and free and then try to build beyond that – to eventually stage a regular event, a much bigger deal that charges admission. But, with this new open-mic format happening on the first Tuesday of each month, the process has kind of been reversed, hasn’t it? What led to this progression?

“There’s a number of reasons we decided to do this,” said Gillis. “One – the main one – is community building. There are a lot of people out there who have ideas for stories, but maybe they’ve never written before and they’re not exactly sure how to get started with formulating a 15-to-20-minute piece. Or maybe they’ve written at that length, but they don’t have a lot of performance experience, maybe they’re a little afraid of getting up in front of people. So we wanted to create a very safe space for people to try something out and just have fun, to be very playful and just explore ideas they might have. We’ll be offering coaching to people, too, if they want to take their piece to the next level. We’ll be creating a bit of a pipeline.”

Ah, so somebody could build something from their open-mic experience into a bigger presentation at BedPost Confessions?

“Exactly,” said Gillis. “But I also think people really get a lot out of just being able to stand up and tell a little bit of – of their truth. And this is another place for people to do that. Maybe they don’t want to get up on the main stage. Maybe they just have a five-minute piece they wanna do and that’s all they wanna do. So we wanted to open the doors for that as well. We’d been talking about this on and off for about a year, because we also want to teach a class, to offer writing and performance coaching in a classroom setting, but we polled our audience to find out what they want the most – and an open mic was a very popular choice. Also, I never get to talk to as many people as I’d like to after a BedPost Confessions show – because I’m always running around, producing – and this will be another aspect of community, where we get to be with each other, meet each other, and reach out to individuals.”