One Women show Musclebound set for five West Country dates

Intelligent, provocative and very funny one-woman show examining Rosy Carrick’s real-life quest for tortured beefcake, 80s action, pleasure, freedom and real sexual power.

In her multi-award-winning theatre debut Passionate Machine, feminist powerhouse, Rosy Carrick became the world’s first female time-travelling doctor. In her new show, she is Musclebound to examine our most shameful  secrets. The show is undertaking a UK tour in March, stopping off in Exeter on 21 March.

At the age of five, Rosy, was watching live action films featuring characters like He-Man and Conan the Barbarian being stripped, beaten and humiliated by their male antagonists. This sparked an odyssey of secret obsession that would shape her erotic life forever. When bodybuilders and 80s action films unite, you can always count on one thing - a good hard flogging! 

Now, newly single, forty, with a string of disappointing relationships behind her and sharing relationship advice with her teenage daughter, Rosy is forced to confront the niggling suspicion that something about her love life has never felt quite right.

Can her past obsession with tortured beefcake really be the key to her salvation? Or does a more uncomfortable sexual truth lurk, waiting to be reckoned with? 

‘When I was writing Musclebound, I basically set out to write the show I wished I could have seen when I was a teenager’ she explained. ‘It’s about me getting to grips with my childhood passion for watching these incredible scenes of hyper-muscular men being abused. About why that dynamic felt so powerful. Musclebound takes a playful, candid and highly singular look at sexual power, female pleasure and the politics and principles of orgasm-faking.’  

‘Perfectly poignant and profound… Musclebound drips with Carrick’s charisma and bursts with originality’ The List

Join Rosy in this intelligent, provocative and terrifically funny real-life story, as she goes to any lengths to find out – even if that means asking Dolph Lundgren and Arnold Schwarzenegger themselves…

‘Intelligent, thought-provoking and witty – the whole audience was crying with laughter’ The Voice ★★★★

Rosy is forced to ask herself: what are the sexual lessons we want to pass on to our daughters – and what do we still need to learn for ourselves? 

‘Startling, laugh-out-loud funny, erudite examination of age, relationships and female sexuality’  What’sOnStage ★★★★

Rosy Carrick is a writer, performer, actor and translator. Her critically acclaimed play Passionate Machine won awards for Best Design and Best New Play at Brighton Fringe, and The Infallibles Award for Theatrical Excellence at Edinburgh Fringe. She has co-hosted the poetry stages at Latitude and Port Eliot Festivals and hosts the Glastonbury Poetry and Words stage. Her debut poetry collection Chokey was published in 2018. Rosy has a PhD on the Russian revolutionary poet Vladimir Mayakovsky and has released two books of his work in translation. She is currently co-writing a video game with ZA/UM, the creators of Disco Elysium. 

Musclebound is directed by Fringe First winner Katie Bonna and will be at Exeter Phoenix on Thursday 21 March at 7.30pm. Tickets are priced £5-£12. Box office: 

https://exeterphoenix.org.uk/ or call 01392 667080.