Sex Werque: Notes from the Field

Overview

Sex Werque:Notes from the Field is an auto-biographical solo show about working as a stripper in Pittsburgh.  Ella-Gabriel Mason explores how we perform eroticism and consume intimacy, both in the club and at home. Through theater, dance, and filmed interviews with other sex workers, they unpack the world of sex work: the emotional and economic forces, the movement vocabulary, the masks, and the moments of authentic connection.

About the Artist

Ella-Gabriel Mason (they/them)

An artmaker, educator and bodyworker, they combine rigorous academic research with lived experience, words with dance, brain with body, living in the tension between ways of knowing and methods of being. Over the past decade Mason has created 9 evening-length performance works and a number of installations, video pieces, and short movement works. They have been granted residencies at Future Tenant Gallery (PGH) and Pearlarts Studios (PGH), and their works have been presented at the New Hazlett Theater (PGH), Kelly-Strayhorn Theater (PGH), vox populi (PHL), wild project (NYC), WOW Café Theater (NYC), and BAAD! (NYC). Mason has received grants from the Heinz Endowments, PA Council on the Arts, the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and the Kelly-Strayhorn Theater. As an MFA candidate at Temple University they received the competitive Thesis Completion Grant, the Vice Provost Student Research & Creativity Grant, and the Dance Department Film Award. Mason is currently an instructor at Temple University where they have taught composition, improvisation, and dance science and somatics. In addition to their work as a creator and performer, Mason is a licensed massage therapist specializing in trauma-sensitive bodywork.