The NarcoSexuals
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Alwin Poiana.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
Photo Willem Popelier.
The NarcoSexuals explores the hidden world of chemsex. The audience moves around a single-family home, glimpsing an abstracted portrayal of a sex party through the windows: men who meet in private homes, finding and losing one another amid sexualized drug use. Their monologues, spoken in unison, reveal a shared hunger for excess, intimacy, and separation from the heteronormative outside world. The six-hour performance is structured like a seemingly endless sex marathon.
With his voyeuristic work, Dries Verhoeven captures both the euphoria of sexualized drug use and the ache of unfulfilled desire. He asks whether chemsex represents a continuation of the sexual liberation of the 1980s, or a symptom of neoliberal hedonism. Forty years after ‘gay liberation’, are we heading toward a ‘narcosexual revolution’ or have we abandoned our sexual ideals, leaving the so-called revolt comatose on the sofa?
The audience, peering through the windows, becomes a silent witness. Spectators are never invited to join the party, reflecting the way society views queer subcultures from a distance—mesmerised, anxious, or disdainful. Moments of unabashed pleasure and vulnerability alternate, leaving a lingering sense of wistful longing for collective rebellion. The party mirrors a society struggling with intimacy in an age of hyper-individualism and the pharmacologisation of the mind.
The work was selected for Het Theaterfestival (Belgium, 2023) and nominated for the VSCD Mime/Performance Prize (Netherlands, 2022/2023).
The NarcoSexuals explores the hidden world of chemsex. The audience moves around a single-family home, glimpsing an abstracted portrayal of a sex party through the windows: men who meet in private homes, finding and losing one another amid sexualized drug use. Their monologues, spoken in unison, reveal a shared hunger for excess, intimacy, and separation from the heteronormative outside world. The six-hour performance is structured like a seemingly endless sex marathon.
With his voyeuristic work, Dries Verhoeven captures both the euphoria of sexualized drug use and the ache of unfulfilled desire. He asks whether chemsex represents a continuation of the sexual liberation of the 1980s, or a symptom of neoliberal hedonism. Forty years after ‘gay liberation’, are we heading toward a ‘narcosexual revolution’ or have we abandoned our sexual ideals, leaving the so-called revolt comatose on the sofa?
The audience, peering through the windows, becomes a silent witness. Spectators are never invited to join the party, reflecting the way society views queer subcultures from a distance—mesmerised, anxious, or disdainful. Moments of unabashed pleasure and vulnerability alternate, leaving a lingering sense of wistful longing for collective rebellion. The party mirrors a society struggling with intimacy in an age of hyper-individualism and the pharmacologisation of the mind.
The work was selected for Het Theaterfestival (Belgium, 2023) and nominated for the VSCD Mime/Performance Prize (Netherlands, 2022/2023).
Video
Video by Thorsten Alofs. Email info@driesverhoeven.com to request the password.
Video by Thorsten Alofs. Email info@driesverhoeven.com to request the password.
Press
“I’ve often felt that something deeper was missing behind the “love is love” rhetoric... homophobia is not rooted in who we love – it's often about how we fuck.“
“Reclaiming desire” at Damn Magazine by Colin Keaysby (11 April, 2024)Read the article here
“As concentrated and penetrating as the gaze may be, so free is the audience's range of movement.“
Rojda Karakuş at Rekto:Verso (5 October 2023)Read the essay here (in Dutch)
“I become painfully aware of my former moral superiority, back when I believed I was completely unbiased. (...) Is my ostentatiously serious, supposedly 'self-aware' way of looking really open-minded?“
Dagmar Teurelincx at Rekto:Verso (5 October 2023)Read the essay here (in Dutch)
“Verhoeven shows the humanity and desire behind the extremes, and succeeds in being confrontational and poignant, without being overly explicit.“
Simon Baetens in Etcetera (24 April 2023)Read the review here (in Dutch)
“Dries Verhoeven's work is always an exercise in plural thinking (...) And if there is one thing neoliberalism won't tolerate, it is plurality: identities that cannot be catalogued, controlled and thus marketed. Watching The NarcoSexuals is watching a form of freedom that has nothing to do with individual hedonism, but everything to do with a resistance to collective self-discipline.“
Evelyne Coussens in De Morgen (21 April 2023)Read the review (in Dutch)
“As a spectator, you are a voyeur, witnessing this incredible orgy of horniness, intimacy and loneliness. (...) As far as we are concerned, the best theatre production of the year.“
Filip Tielens in De Standaard (19 April 2023)Read the review (in Dutch)
“Verhoeven masterfully translates a sexual indulgence that normally takes place behind closed doors, into the public realm and makes it relatable. Without moral judgement, but with questions about its necessity.“
Marijn v/d Jagt in De Groene (28 Sept 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)
“Dries Verhoeven weaves an ingenious ambiguity into his performance The NarcoSexuals. The installation confronts you, non-stop, with your own prejudices […] A ceaseless ebb and flow of beauty and melancholy.“
Herien Wensink in de Volkskrant (16 May 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)
“The NarcoSexuals is at the same time liberating and uncomfortable in the way it makes taboos transparent.“
Sander Janssens in NRC (14 May 2022)Read the article (in Dutch)
“The new installation by Dries Verhoeven looks more theatrical and dramatic than I am used to in his work. Swaying between a peepshow and the re-enactment of Grindr sex date, a wonderful game of looking inside and out arises.“
Fransien van der Putt in Theaterkrant (13 May 2022)Read the review (in Dutch)
“After all, we are dealing with a very refined and intelligent, perhaps even perfidious or somewhat hellish attempt, in which what we watch, this peculiar reenactment of a sex party, is neither apologeticized nor condemned.“
Piotr Gruszczyński op dwutygodnik.com (August 2022)Read the review (in Polish)
“Verhoeven wants to start a public conversation with The NarcoSexuals about the meaning of chemsex, sex under the influence of drugs, a phenomenon that is especially popular among gay men. But his intentions are broader: he also wants to talk about the relationship between lust and intimacy, and about the fact that where the gay movement used to want to be visible, the chemsex scene flourishes mainly in secret.“
Hein Janssen (de Volkskrant) visited Dries Verhoeven in the Studio in Almere and interviewed him during the preparations for The NarcoSexuals (12 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)
“The NarcoSexuals is a vivisection of the underbelly of our times. We take a look beneath the smooth surface, beyond the world in which we all have to be healthy, high-performing, sensible people. It goes deeper, into that area of growing discomfort, where a drugged body searches for happiness, balancing between madness and value.“
An interview by Jowi Schmitz (Trouw) during the rehearsals of The NarcoSexuals (12 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)
“Verhoeven saw chemsex take off during the corona pandemic. “The many restrictions had a different effect on families than on single gay men who already have a history of restrictions.” In the reconstructed social housing, there are no restrictions.“
An interview by Lorianne van Gelder (Het Parool) during the creation process (10 May 2022)Read the interview (in Dutch)
nomination & selection
The NarcoSexuals was selected for Het TheaterFestival 2023 in Belgium and was nominated for the Dutch Performance Prize, Season 2022/23 in the Netherlands.
“No other performance last season impressed the jury more physically, thanks in part to its intelligent play between looking and being looked at. What we perhaps appreciate even more about this permeating installation is its fusion of different art domains to create new frames of meaning.” Jury Het TheaterFestival 2023
“Verhoeven succeeds in making the perilous desire for the ecstasy of drug-laden sex palpable for a broader audience.” Jury Dutch Performance Prize
Essay 'Such a longing for intimacy'
Performance text
Credits
concept Dries Verhoeven
performance Bráulio Bandeira, Matteo Bifulco, Tamar Blom, Vincent Clavaguera, Wojciech Grudziński, Estefano Romani, Barnaby Savage
understudies Mher Brutyan, Victor Mendes
movement material developed in collaboration with the performers
sound design Thijs van Vuure
dramaturgy Hellan Godee & Miguel A. Melgares
assistance Marte Boneschansker
internship text/direction Hendrik de Pecker
technique Roel Evenhuis, Peer Thielen
set dresser Eveline Didderen
production ‘n More – Ellen van Bunnik, Lise van den Hout, Thijs de Bruijn, Jitske Weijand
internship production Maaike Postma
extras Utrecht Oliver Wagstaff, Lisanne Pol, Rafael Matt, Sasa Hara, Marie Clavaguera, August Geerlings, Jannes van Arkel, Marvin Staal, Gwen de Visser, Marco Franssen
extras Den Bosch Monique van den Boomen, Tom Seebregts, Liesbeth Verstegen, Marina Kopier, Suzanne Schoenmakers, Anita Witteveen, Nancy Frederiks, Oliver Wagstaff
Brussels edition in co-presentation with KANAL – Centre Pompidou, Charleroi danse and Les Halles de Schaerbeek. With the support of the Kingdom of the Netherlands Embassy and of the Performing Arts Fund NL
a production by Studio Dries Verhoeven