I Füçkèð Your Country

I had trouble asking for my tickets for I Füçkèð Your Country. Not just me. I overheard others: “”that show about Europe” or “I F-ed.” I was starting to get sweaty. But our friendly Fringe Festival volunteer had no trouble saying it out loud! Phew! So then I relaxed and proudly held the program title-side out with Twanna Hines’ wide, bright smile in pure advocation of letting your freak flag fly!

After a series of hilarious European pronunciation guide videos, a quiet, passionate experience is overheard. Shared between two people, the sound of sex explains the set. Wine glasses on the floor over here, an empty wine bottle over there, and condoms on the table blanketing the sex toys and “smart smut” available to you, for the right answer, during the show’s many trivia opportunities.

Twanna walks onto the stage of the Goethe Institut in lingerie, surprised. We’ve caught her in the act! Any nerves she might have had were hair-flipped away and the post-sex endorphin rushed all of us into the beginning of an important show. Through biography, pictures, and trivia, Twanna navigates sexualities, genders, and sexual education so fluidly that, as she put it “I’m gonna have lube on my hands for the rest of the night.”

Many of the slight technical issues on opening night, like moving too early or late with overhead sound, highlight the transparency with which Twanna operates. Sometimes we are so eager, and that eagerness is exactly what keeps us from getting what we want. Twanna take us back; then a young woman from Mississippi, lying on the floor of “Geoff’s” loft in London, legs slightly opened and tensed. Twanna remembers she didn’t know how to then. When Geoff suggests that they go upstairs to the bedroom, she tells us “You’d be surprised how quickly you can figure these things out!”

A couple of minutes into the show, she asked a question about the sexual education of the different Europeans who were there. From the privileged position of my seat I saw three hands, but only two responses.
Throughout the show, the questions became more difficult and as the prizes changed, from condoms, to literature, to sex toys, and the mystery box and bag, more and more hands raised!

Twanna Hines is unabashed, unapologetic and unadulteratedly Herself. She knows we are gonna do it, whether between bedsheets, on park benches at night or with the door slightly open, hoping our parents don’t hear. Let I Füçkèð Your Country be your protection.

Take me to the DCTS 2014 Capital Fringe Guide