What do inquisitive 11-year-olds, nonagenarian pensioners and former education secretary Nicky Morgan have in common?

The answer is that they all share an interest in sex. And they are all characters in The Talk, a new play exploring what is - and is not - taught during sex-education lessons.

Performing at London’s VAULT Festival this month, The Talk runs the gamut of classroom sex-ed awkwardness, taking in everything from condoms on cucumbers to porn magazines.

It was written by maths teacher Neela Doležalova, whose career has also involved teaching personal, social, health and economics (PSHE) education.

“I always loved teaching PSHE,” Ms Doležalova told Tes. “But there are lots of sensitivities around teaching relationships and sex education, that a lot of adults - and a lot of teachers - find quite difficult.”

Carrots, rulers, cucumbers

Ms Doležalova interviewed a range of people, from secondary pupils to parents, teachers, doctors and former education secretaries Nicky Morgan and Ed Balls, to find out their views on sex education.

Edited versions of these interviews will be played into headphones worn by actors during the play. The actors will then perform the interviews for the audience, reflecting the pace and intonation of the original speakers.

“There are all the condom-putting-on stories,” Ms Doležalova said. “Teachers putting them on carrots, rulers, cucumbers, and all kinds of things.

“The stories of how babies are made: people who thought parents mixed their smells together to make a baby.”

And then there are all the ways in which people misunderstood sex. “The people who didn’t get any sex education, because their teachers were embarrassed,” Ms Doležalova said. “They laugh about it, but actually it means they got nothing themselves.

“Then the extreme lengths that people have gone to, to find out information that they could have been given at school: the one Playboy magazine that was passed around. A lot from young people now about the porn they’re accessing, and what it does to their relationships.”

And, she adds, there are sadder stories from older interviewees: “People who didn’t have sex education, and didn’t know what sex was until they’d had it. That’s what happens when you don’t talk to young people about sex and relationships.

“If we don’t give young people the language to talk about their bodies and their rights, then how can they express what’s happening to them?”

‘It’s shaped our lives’

Relationships and sex education will be compulsory in all English schools from September 2019. But, while the government has consulted on the content of the curriculum, it has yet to reach any decisions.

Ms Doležalova hopes that trainee teachers, governors and parents will be particularly interested in the play. But, she added: “Everyone has had experience of sex education - or lack of it - so it has shaped all of our lives.”

Jane Lees, chair of the Sex Education Forum, has welcomed the play. “The Talk gives voice, literally, to those not often heard in the current debates about sex and relationships education,” she said.

“It all adds up to a compelling case for making good, relevant sex and relationships education available to everyone.”

The Talk will be performed at the VAULT Festival, in London, at 9.30pm on Thursday 15 and Friday 16 March. Find out more here.

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