We sat down with JESSICA ASZKENASY, a fascinating actress and performer bringing her bold and genre-bending debut solo show TITCLOWN to the Edinburgh Fringe this August.
How did stripping away polish and perfection in your OnlyFans content reshape your understanding of performance and presence?
As cliché as it sounds, a lot of it comes down to letting go of control. You’re never going get it 100% right, and your content is never going to be the spitting image of what you have in your minds’ eye. Being on stage is the same. What draws people in is natural raw energy (ha, ha). People can sense inauthenticity a mile off. They want to know what your actual lived experience is. When you’re performing it’s tempting to go down the road of what you think people want to see from you, or the image of yourself you want to project. Your best work comes from letting go of all of that.
What did you discover about power and vulnerability by choosing to show up unfiltered – both online and on stage?
That both are key to – platitude incoming – peace. There’s a power to vulnerability and openness to getting things wrong. And people are incredibly forgiving. I took a long break from making content towards the end of last year because I have Long Covid. I was honest with my subscribers, and a lot of them stuck around. Being on stage is very similar. You might misjudge a beat or interaction, but as long as you acknowledge it audiences will (mostly) still stick around for the ride.
Can you talk about the tension between being seen and being in control of how you’re seen – especially as a woman in performance?
I saw a meme online a few weeks ago that said something along the lines of “every woman has a male voyeur critiquing her every move inside of her”. Learning to let that shit go is really hard. But once you do, it’s incredibly exhilarating, and audiences seem to really connect with it. If I accidentally come across “too harsh”, the audience lets me know, which is always interesting. Audiences will tolerate a lot from men, so learning what they’ll tolerate from me has been an interesting process. But if I want to make something I’m proud of creatively speaking, I have to know where those lines are.
What does it mean to reclaim the gaze – not just from the audience, but from the industry’s expectations of femininity and success?
I think no matter what gender you are, if you want to make something you’re proud of creatively speaking you have to push the idea of success to one side for a while. In terms of what it might mean for me, it means doing the show on my terms and not giving into this appetite for cis women to disembowel themselves on stage. There’s a specific way that vulnerability seems to have to be performed in order for a show to be successful. And if it’s not there, it seems like the industry connects with the show less somehow. It’s absolutely exhausting. I’m going to do my mad shit for an hour and I’m not going to give you a sad backstory. And I’m going to do it with my pubes hanging out. AND it’s going to make you laugh.
In what ways has financial independence changed your relationship with your art and your body?
Financial freedom has honestly been the key to making all of this happen. It’s not a coincidence that most performers come from middle and upper middle class backgrounds. I think we take for granted that amount of energy and space you need to be able to make work. I was in a very different place financially 12 years ago and was taking care of a family member. Being able to perform, let alone go to Edinburgh Fringe was so far off my radar. I don’t think I even knew what the Fringe was. I’ve worked really hard to get where I am, so if I’m going to do this, I’m going to do it my way. My art is my baby, and my body enables me to get me where I want to go. I don’t want to worry about whether my act would work on Live at the Apollo. I want to make my stupid shows and have a wonderful time doing it. I’ve come too far to NOT do that.
How does TITCLOWN use satire and absurdity to challenge the boundaries between the erotic, the comic, and the autonomous?
I would like to think that TITCLOWN is entirely autonomous and mixes the erotic and the comic throughout. I wear a red Baywatch-style swimsuit which could be seen very much as an appeasement to the male gaze. TITCLOWN is sexy, but she’s also quite grotesque. Grotesque can be sexy, if we’re willing to go there. We’re all just animals dressed up in human suits. Bodies are weird and funny. The female body has been commodified so much that we forget that tits are just bags of fat. Let’s see what we can do with two stupid bags of fat for 50 minutes.
Jessica Aszkenasy: TITCLOWN will be performed at 10.20pm in Assembly Roxy (Snug Bar) from 30th July – 24th August (not 13th)
For tickets and more information, visit: https://assemblyfestival.com/whats-on/1036-jessica-aszkenasy-titclown