Wear your pyjamas. Bring a squishy toy — or a curious friend. Settle in for.. Bedtime Tales told by Sex Workers is an intimate, inclusive evening of readings, monologues, short sketches and sharp-witted performance created and presented by sex workers. Part salon, part sleepover, part civic intervention, the event invites audiences to hear first-person stories drawn from memoir and lived experience — stories that are by turns funny, tender, confronting and deeply human.
These are not abstract policy debates. They are lived realities.
Local sex workers who are also writers, theatre-makers and artists will present their own work, sharing insights into their intimate lives, labour and creative practices. Contributors who are not publicly known as sex workers — or who prefer not to perform — will have their stories read by performers with lived experience. This structure protects anonymity where required, prioritises safety, and ensures that voices often excluded from public conversation are still heard clearly and powerfully.
The evening’s line-up includes:
- Democracy in Action – imagining a world where sex workers make the rules.
- A Domme-led Submission Writing Session, inviting audiences to explore how they can meaningfully contribute to public consultation on decriminalisation: Your Say, Our Way
- 10 minute stories from the dramatic, to the erotic, to the comedic; all written and performed by Canberra artists who are also sex workers, or who have relationships or histories in the sex work community.
- MC’d by iconoclastic Canberra based adult performer Friday Addams
- Authors including Dr Hilary Caldwell, sex worker, sexologist, researcher and grandmother aka Dr Slut of Slutdom: Reclaiming shame-free sexuality and Natasha Ambrose (sex industry alias of Canberra-native theatre maker & performer Charley Allanah).
Some works address the impacts of stigma, discrimination and criminalisation. Others explore intimacy, care, humour, resilience and everyday life. Collectively, the stories position sex workers not as caricatures or controversies, but as complex, creative and recognisably human members of the community.
Why is this happening now?
The ACT Government has announced its intention to fully decriminalise sex work, prompting renewed public discussion about rights, safety and legitimacy — often without meaningful participation from sex workers themselves.
Bedtime Tales centres lived experience at a pivotal cultural moment. Through art, humour and direct testimony, it creates space for nuance, complexity and community connection — beyond headlines and beyond stigma.
This debut performance marks the beginning of a planned series of community-led storytelling events centring sex workers’ creative voices.
We like to think of it as storytelling as a form of civic engagement, democracy wrapped in a doona.
Event: Bedtime Tales told by Sex Workers
Date and Time: April 7th , 6pm - 8pm
Location: Smith's Alternative
Format: Live performance and storytelling
Audience: 18+
Tickets: $20 Full | $10 Concession/SW Community
