IT is the seventies, a decade of miniskirts, hot pants, bell bottoms, with denim clad hippies rubbing shoulders with the kings and queens of glam rock.

David Bowie is just making his debut appearance on Top of the Pops as the skin tight trouser wearing and pale faced Ziggy Stardust.

A generation of teenagers sit enchanted by Bowie’s manifestation of the perfect rock star, promiscuous and nursing a massive drug habit – a manifestation of alien being carrying a message of peace and free love.

This is where 1972: The Future of Sex by The Wardrobe Ensemble begins, as a trio of teens begin to explore their own sexuality in a production which explores both the angst and awkwardness associated with it.

“Bowie became a little bit of a symbol for us,” says Tom Brennan. 

“It has been quite strange because we made the show last year and performed it for the first time last summer, and then his death earlier this year has given the whole production a slightly melancholic tone in a way. It is quite sad.

“What is funny about Bowie is that level of experimentation that he was doing at that time, we are still sort of reeling from – you cannot look to Lady Gaga or whoever nowadays, it all kind of pales in comparison to what Bowie was doing to ‘shock’ his audiences.

“It became a really useful symbol for us with the fight between the old and the new and the young and the old really.”

The story of the show begins as Ziggy Stardust makes his appearance on Top of the Pops as the teens Brian, Christine and Penny all struggle with their own unique idiosyncrasies with their sexuality.

Penny is writing a novel on the DH Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley’s Lover, a book notorious for its explicit content, Christine is watching Deepthroat, one of the first mainstream pornographic movies, and Brian is sat in his room confused.

Despite living an era of social revolution, what The Wardrobe Ensemble tap into is the chronic sense of self consciousness and anxiety.

They find despite an era of possibility, these emotions were just as prevalent among teens then as it is now.

“When we first started as a company we were going to make a show about my virginity at the time,” says Brennan. “But then I lost it, so that show went out the window.

“But then five years later we came back to this idea of those sorts of feelings of embarrassment and sexual angst, so we thought the seventies would be quite a nice moment to talk about those sorts of emotions. It is a moment between the aids epidemic and the sexual revolution so it is a moment of potential freedom.”

But despite this moment which should erupt with exploration and loose love, Brennan says what they found was actually the same sense of nerves which face teens to this day.

“We have had a lot of people who were growing up in the seventies coming up to us and just saying ‘how did you know what it was like?’” he says. 

“Those feelings of confusion around your sexuality and your sexual partners are exactly the same now as they were back then.

“But there are subtle shifts in terms of context, especially in terms of gender and identity.”

But with these ideas being explored with a heartfelt and slightly humorous lens, the big question the ensemble wanted to get to the bottom of was “is sex talked about in the right way?”.

“It does feel like sex is removed from people and humanity, it exists in this isolated zone which does not connect to any other part of our lives,” says Brennan.

“Yet people’s sexuality and their relationship to sex totally informs who they and the relationships they have.

“It really became one of the most political shows we have made and oddly hopefully as it suggested if talked about sex in an honest and human way life would be much better.

“It sort of unites the audience. When they are the awkward moments and those emotions everyone recognised it.

“That explodes those emotional moments out onto the stage and the feeling of rejection becomes something huge and very theatrical.”

The show premiered at Edinburgh Festival Fringe last year and gained big acclaim, winning The Stage award for acting excellence and receiving a slew of five star reviews.

It will make its Brighton Fringe this weekend.

Doors 7.30pm, £12.50.
Call 01273 917272