Fetish 101 is a show which, in the words of the creator Matthew Tallon, is a “mix of stand-up comedy and internet sketch content”. The show, which is based on a series of TikToks that Tallon, a Trinity English Studies graduate and standup comedian, created over lockdown, is called “The Matthew Tallon Fetish Hour”.
Tallon would “describe different kinks and get everything wrong, from the inept perspective of a repressed person who doesn’t understand anything about sex”.
Despite originally having pitched the idea to Fringe as a live stand-up comedy show, the festival’s commitment to online content enabled Tallon to harness the format of an online college course, where “[his] character from the Tiktoks becomes a university lecturer and was given the authority to teach people all these wrong things about different kinks”. This medium creates a comedic juxtaposition between the relatable online learning experience and the topic of sexuality which facilitates Tallon’s simultaneous parodying of Zoom university while “obliquely giving a good sense of the fetish community”, fundamentally dealt with in “a non-judgemental and celebratory way”.
Fetish 101, according to Tallon, “came about very organically over the course of about a year”, originating from a “one-off Tiktok where the joke was the idea that [he] was pretending that it was a weekly show”. This, in turn, developed into a weekly occurrence, due to the popularity of demands Tallon received, noting that he found it “ridiculously fun” and “fun to write in a way that [he] never had before”. When the time came for the Fringe callout, according to Tallon, Fetish 101 “could benefit from a longer form” and it “felt like a subject matter he could address”, while the online lecture form would suit his voice well, as “[his] jokes are video and editing based”.
The emails, which take the form of a newsletter, will be sent every Monday to Friday of the two weeks of the Fringe, from the 13th to the 24th September. Everyone signed up to Fetish 101 will get an email in their mailbox with a short five minute video lecture which, in Tallon’s words, is “something that a lot of young people could relate to right now as it uses some of the forms that we’ve all become very familiar with”. In addition, the newsletter will sometimes include class notes with written jokes about the discussed topic, as well as occasional links to actual forums. Through his inclusion of different types of comedic elements, Tallon’s focus was on mimicking the “theatrical sense of immersion” synonymous with in person comedy for his online show, creating a multimedia element, in the hopes of making it feel like the audience is actually immersed in it, “for the ten minutes every day”.
When asked about the challenges faced while developing his production, Tallon notes that “when you’re writing a piece that is very much about the internet and that deals with how we achieve human connection in a sexual or romantic context, the research on forums is an endless minefield, an infinite hole that you can keep on diving deeper and deeper into”, which “you need to pull yourself out of to start writing”. Tallon also adds the difficulty of “finding the right way to handle the subject matter while making it fun, in a way that is positive for everyone”, highlighting the necessity to “keep an awareness when writing jokes to make sure that the show strikes the right tone”. Nevertheless, he acknowledges the process as “a very fun and freeing experience”, hoping that it “captures the fun spirit of the Fringe being back”.
Audiences can expect “a fun absurdist journey” with similar comedic elements to Tallon’s TikTok series, while taking “the next step in the narrative progression through the email format”. He adds that the comedy of the individual videos will be able to “give a zoomed out sense of fetishes and human sexuality as a continuous web of never ending permutations”, once the audience has all ten emails. Fetish 101 promises to give a refreshing and immersive view of sexuality with a hilarious comedic twist added through the online lecture medium.
Fetish 101 begins on September 13th and audiences will receive an email every Monday to Friday for the 10 days of the duration of Dublin Fringe Festival. Tickets can be bought on the Dublin Fringe Festival website.
