Bob Bartlett on ‘Bareback Ink’ at The Capital Fringe Festival and Hopefully at The Edinburgh Fringe

Help send my play Bareback Ink to Edinburgh Fringe this August!!

So earlier this year I decided to get a second tattoo – twenty years after my first – this one also commemorating the death of my younger brother to leukemia. The day was odd. I’d planned to get the numbers 323 on my back on 3/23, the date of his passing in 1991. The first shop I walked up to was addressed 323. I know! Creepy! The tattooist was booked for the day but when I told him my story he asked me back that evening after closing. It was during that encounter that the wheels began turning on a fringish two-hander about an unlikely relationship which develops between an asexual tattooist and his client.

I’ve been interested for some time in exploring asexuality in my work and the challenges asexuals face living in a sexual world. And it seemed the art, the act of tattooing – let’s be honest, tattoos are hot – is intimate and erotic, and an odd vocation for a man without sexual desire. So I scrambled to get the play into the Capital Fringe Festival – and we’re outlandishly attempting to move the play to Edinburgh Fringe this August. So – if you ever wanted to see a playwright getting a tattoo on video – check out our Kickstarter site and help us head to the UK!!

And we open at Gear Box here in DC as a part of the Capital Fringe Festival on July 13 for sixteen performances!

Tickets are on sale here.

Performances at The Gear Box

Bob Bartlett’s website.