SEX WITH STRANGERS Comes To Hollywood Fringe

When it comes to what we desire most in our lives, there are two important questions that we need to answer: How far will we go to get what we want, and will we be the same person if we do?

Those issues are at the heart of the passionate, poignant and nationally acclaimed Sex With Strangers, produced by the South City Players Guild at the Stephanie Feury Theater this June as part of the Hollywood Fringe Festival.

In Sex With Strangers, failed novelist Olivia meets Ethan, a celebrated (and much younger) writer made famous by his sexcapade tell-all blog, at a snowbound bed and breakfast, and their mutual attraction quickly gets hot and heavy. As a weekend tryst develops into a long-term romance, their personal and professional lives collide. Ethan seeks legitimacy, dismissing his bad boy reputation as nothing more than an invented character. Olivia has her doubts, but craves for the literary fame Ethan can offer her. Ambition, identity and trust are in play when online personas clash with real world expectations in this smart, steamy take on modern love.

"We live in a very complicated time for dating, where a person is only a swipe or click away," said Jake Ferree, producer and one of the show's lead actors. "We live in the age of information and the mystery and spontaneity of dating is not quite what it used to be. Relationships have never been easy for me and they take a great deal of passion, trust, and work. Something tells me I'm not the only one to feel this way with our modern sensibility."

It's that familiarity and the realness of the characters and their struggle that drew Ferree to presenting this play at Fringe. A St. Louis native who has performed in theatre across the nation, Ferree now mainly works in film and television, including work in a new show streaming this fall and his feature film They're Inside, which was just picked up for distribution by Epic Pictures and Amazon. His co-star is Melissa Center, a working stage and screen actor with an impressive credits list and work with ABC, NBC, HBO and Showtime. To helm the production, he's brought in Natalie Avital, an accomplished filmmaker, director and documentarian.

Sex With Strangers has seen its share of acclaim since debuting in 2015. For Ferree, the beauty of the work comes down to the relationship.

"These characters are not living in a bubble of science-fiction they are you and I in our most vulnerable, real, and honest selves," he said. "This show is a mashup of ambition, sex, and love. It is the reflection of a modern relationship between two people who will stop it nothing to get what and who they want. I hope the people that see this show find a moment to reflect on their own relationships in this modern era and see themselves in Ethan an Olivia. We are not perfect people and our relationships can be messy, but love is a rare and powerful thing that is worth trying and messing up if only once in a lifetime."

FOR TICKETS AND MORE INFORMATION: https://www.hollywoodfringe.org/projects/5932