Cheap Tricks

On a recent trip to the sex clinic, I asked the doctor if she thought chemsex was on the rise. She didn’t say anything, but made the gesture of an explosion with her hands. After some moments, she said that there had already been a significant increase in chemsex-related deaths in just the past five years. She’d witnessed it.

Almost a century before this trip to the sex clinic, Jean Cocteau wrote ominously about his own addiction (to opium), saying that “[it] is a decision maker. It replaces your will with a false peace. It is the ultimate illusionist.” Using a mix of autofictional texts, interviews with chemsex users, movement research and an investigation into the basics of stage magic, this research project aims to look into the links between magic, chemsex and theatre as arts of deception. How can a person disappear and why would they want to? How can we trick ourselves into believing something is present when it is absent? And how can magic be used as a metaphor and theatrical tool to speak about chemsex?