SEXODUS
What does it mean to be a woman in a world that constantly judges you on how you look? In SEXODUS, an actress stands on the threshold of her fortieth year, caught between expectation and resistance. In an explosive mix of performance, video and music, she explores how a female body is shaped by the gaze, industry and history. What begins as adaptation grows into a radical break with the system that formed her.
Duration 90 minutes
Genre Theatre
Language English
As long as i live, i will be aging. My only other option is to die
In SEXODUS we see an actress who knows she is expected, in Western culture, to look twenty-four until she is sixty. She keeps adapting, over and over again, until that mechanism starts to break. Her body carries the traces of centuries of aesthetic pressure. What begins as compliance turns into resistance. In a physical and musical revenge fantasy she uses the tools of art, entertainment and social media to fight back against a system that feeds on female insecurity.-|-
SEXODUS is an intensely physical rollercoaster in which Naomi Velissariou transforms into multiple female images. Under the direction of Nicole Beutler, a layered interplay between body, text and image emerges. The writing of Velissariou and Bregje Hofstede is sharp and uncompromising, supported by sound design and visual interventions by URLAND. Together with costume design by artist Ülkühan Akgül, a theatrical world is created that is both overwhelming and intimate.
The result is a “one woman show” that constantly changes form, just like the body at its center.
About Naomi Velissariou
Naomi Velissariou is a Greek-Belgian director, writer, actor and performance artist. In her work she explores the fluidity of identity and how it is shaped by contemporary visual culture.
She creates poetic and confrontational performances in which text, music and image merge into an intense theatrical language. Her work is both personal and political and focuses on the mechanisms behind shame, desire and representation.
Velissariou received, among others, the Charlotte Köhler Prize (2017), the Directing Prize (2019), the Theo d’Or (2021) and a nomination for the VSCD Mime/Performance Prize (2025).
Credits
concept, text, performance Naomi Velissariou
direction Nicole Beutler
sound design, composition Jimi Zoet
set, lighting, video Marijn Alexander de Jong-|-
text, dramaturgy Bregje Hofstede
costume design Ülkühan Akgül
SEXODUS is a production of Theater Utrecht in co-production with URLAND, Nicole Beutler Projects and O Festival.
