North East writer launches new play showing the realities of sex work

Alison Stanley is hoping new lockdown restrictions won't affect her new show "Sex Is Hard Work", set to launch in Newcastle next month

The play will follow snippets of the escort's unique life as a sex worker and will be filled with personal memoires, revealing the weird and wonderful requests male customers placed upon her.

Alison says:

“What impressed me most about the person that inspired this is that she most definitely isn't what you'd expect a stereotypical sex worker to be like. She's not the drug addict or the lonely misguided person that has been taken advantage of by the pimp that we hear about in Netflix documentaries. She's a straight-talking businesswoman who saw an opportunity and used it to her advantage.

“She simply went into the industry for the money with a business head on her shoulders and I think that’s very refreshing. She decided that was what she was going to do rather than sit in a call centre or work in ASDA.

“There’s the feminist and women’s empowerment movement behind it, even though people might say you can’t encourage girls to be prostitutes. It’s probably not a great career choice, but there is an ‘I can do what I want’ sort of attitude to many of these women who do choose that life.

“When other girls were buying crack and heroin, she was buying property. She's hilarious. And some of the stories and her experiences will have people on their feet and their bellies aching with laughter.”

Alison Stanley has previously written and performed two sell-out other plays at Edinburgh Fringe (Bedsocks and Secrets in 2016 and Life of Reilly in 2019) and the Finalist for Writer of the year Culture Award 2019 is looking forward to the her company's revised plans for Sex is Hard Work.

The play is set to have a socially distanced launch at the Cluny 2 Venue on Tyneside in November.