Tequila shots are passed around before the show starts. A friendly gesture to start off with the right attitude or a kind warning: you might need this to better navigate the next hour. Maybe both. Loud music starts, and Truscott comes on stage wearing a denim jacket, very high heels, a blonde wig, and nothing else. She is here to make rape jokes, she tells us, and that is exactly what she does regardless of our wishes. Kind of like how rape works.

The high-speed ride has begun and it will not slow down. Truscott’s rhythm leaves little room to breathe between an awkward laugh and the poignant argument that follows. The show pushes with such force perhaps in order to walk against the audience’s intuition – that giddy feeling of laughing almost against our will as soon as we are faced with her nudity and does not leave until the very last joke. The only thing I regret about my experience of the show is my inability to catch every thought, as some irremediably came flying past me.

There is much potential for distraction: videos of famous men talking or singing projected onto the performer´s belly with her pubic hair fashioned into a goatee or a Mohawk, loud pop music (misogynist songs you might not have noticed are misogynist), pictures of famous comedians who have joked about rape in unfortunate fashion, and Daisy Duck. Nevertheless, the message is loud and clear: the understanding of and approach to rape in our culture is for the most part ludicrous. Kind of like the tone of the performance.

In this show’s point of view, rape whistles, techniques to prevent rape, legislation to deal with rape after the fact, and some of the commonly accepted explanations for rape are completely missing the point. What Truscott is doing over and over again (besides provoking politically incorrect laughter) is calling for common sense. Her arguments are simple and transparent, conclusions we could all draw on our own and yet do not; we continue to function under poorly thought out assumptions. We realize that we need to hear this stuff; the status quo needs to be poked, joked about, examined, put on the spot. Amidst all the noise and chaos, clarity emerges (of course, no woman asks for rape, no matter how she dresses or how much she drinks; of course, getting pregnant does not neutralize the fact that a rape occurred), making evident the wrongness of it all. Truscott slaps us in the face more than a couple of times, always with a big smile and accompanied with a punchline.

Truly, the major win of this piece is its infallible humor. Comedy is a perfect vehicle to puncture difficult topics and this piece is an example of employing the genre in service of serious subject matter. Working through the layers (one denim jacket after another and another, five wigs and four bras later), we end up with Truscott’s pivot points about rape bare in our minds. The most prominent of these: we must train the spotlight on the perpetrator as opposed to the victim, and we must hold the perpetrator accountable without mental detours.

Adrienne Truscott’s asking for it: a one-lady rape about comedy starring her pussy and little else! is presented by its creator as light-toned comedy but is in fact a deep, smart, and challenging take on rape in our culture. It forces us to look straight at one of our most uncomfortable social problems; a problem we often refuse to acknowledge as it gains strength from its invisibility.

Adrienne Truscott’s Asking For It: A One-Lady Rape About Comedy Starring Her Pussy and Little Else mixes humor, dance, video, and pussy-puppetry while undoing the rules and rhetoric surrounding rape and comedy. Adrienne straddles the world of stand-up and performance art in this one women show dressed only from the waist up and ankles down. With commentary from George Carlin, Louis C. K. and Robert De Niro, she takes on ducks, mini-skirts, rape whistles, Daniel Tosh, and Rick Ross all while drinking enough gin & tonics to get a girl in trouble. Heavy at its core but light on its feet, Adrienne makes jokes about rape all night long…even if you ask her to stop. Created and Performed by Adrienne Truscott. Co-presented with The Creek and The Cave and Performance Space 122.