It’s part confession, part documentary and part open conversation with the audience. Karin McCracken fearlessly goes where so many fear to tread – breaking the fourth wall and speaking directly with the young people in the theatre about what they find hard in negotiating intimacy.

McCracken holds the stage on her own for an hour – telling the stories of two couples – Jamie and Ari and Karin and Tom. Their stories start much the same – both at parties, deciding that they like each other. But their endings are very different. And playing short clips from the insights of young people they’ve interviewed from New Zealand, through Europe and now to Australia, Karin shows how to enter this daunting world of consent and end up resoundingly saying Yes Yes Yes!

It’s the latest work from award-winning duo McCracken and Eleanor Bishop blending audience interaction with McCracken’s captivating solo performance.

McCracken says they aim to make brilliant theatre, that meets young people where they’re at.

“It’s really skills building and strengths-based looking at how all people can lead healthy relationships in their lives,” McCracken said.

“So when we were making the show, we worked with a number of schools, a number of classes of students to try to make sure that the material was relevant and appropriate and interesting to them.

“We come from the position that young people have the skills to navigate these healthy relationships, and they’re really smart and they have a lot of wisdom that they can share. So we’re just trying to platform that.”

Yes Yes Yes bravely embraces that young people have a sexual life – and empowers them to take part in that while respecting and enjoying the people they share it with.

It is a brilliant show that is so powerful because it was created for young people with their input, frankly exploring healthy and respectful relationships, consent and sex with impact and humour. These are the knotty and necessary topics about desire that young people so want to discuss in a safe space – and this gives them those tools.

McCracken said they used the approach of verbatim theatre to write Yes Yes Yes.

“Verbatim theatre is basically just when you feature the real words of real people, it’s often a feature of what we call social practice theatre,” she said.

“You’re kind of going into a community to make theatre with them and for them or addressing a specific kind of social need. And so that’s a feature of this show. We have the real interviews with real young people that we worked with about all sorts of things about dating and consent and objectification and relationships.

“I love verbatim theatre because it’s really interesting and often real people are just much more interesting than fictional people.”

Yes Yes Yes is on only for a limited season of three performances at La Boite until September 6 before continuing its Australian tour, with the season well timed to coincide with the introduction of comprehensive consent education across the Australian curriculum. If only more young people could see it, rather than endure the often uncomfortable classroom discussions of this powerful topic.

The show has been honed since 2018, overcoming pandemic interruptions to resume touring around the world.

“Eleanor and I are just reflecting that when we were that age, and for anyone my age or older or even younger, we just had to fend for ourselves,” McCracken said.

“There was never any discussion. I probably didn’t hear the word consent in a sexual context until well after I’d left school. And so there was just so much difficulty around that, and I think it would’ve been a lot easier if we’d had something, a resource.

“I think it’s totally appropriate to be talking with younger children about this. I think we’re getting in at an interesting time with this show because it is kind of when teenagers are starting to explore that, and obviously they’re all on different paths of that journey when they see it, but it’s coming right at the time where they’re going to have to make decisions and they’re going to have to enact that behaviour in their own lives. So I think there’s lots of value in getting those conversations started earlier.

“Part of the conversation, which I think is missed is that, sexual relationships should be a positive part of your life. Otherwise, why are we doing it? Why are we engaging in any of this? And it gets missed. And so I think it’s often a fear-based approach, and it’s like if you mess this up, you’re going to ruin your life and you’re going to ruin someone else’s life. We need to get comfortable with the idea of sexuality and people being sexual and wanting to have that as to be a fun part of their existence.”

The intertwining of the stories in the show is quite deliberate, to show how different outcomes evolve.

“We really wanted to land that consent is not like a blank cheque that you write at the beginning of the night. It’s for different things at different times,” she said.

“And in the story between Karin and Tom, I don’t want to kiss when he does, but then we navigate that and then we do end up sleeping together, and enjoying it and it being a positive thing. But it requires some negotiation, it requires us to talk about it.”

She is constantly astounded by the astute responses of the young people in the audience.

“They’re amazing. They’re just incredible. Every time I’m floored by how smart they are and how funny they are, and they are,” she said.

“I feel like I didn’t have a bit of self-awareness when I was their age, and they’re full of it. And I love working with them, they’re always so generous and gracious.

“I think it’s something we should be talking about. And I do think that we always talk about ending sexual violence as a whole community effort. No one’s going to do it alone. So that we need to be able to link up with the community so we are aware of the services in the area, and we want these conversations to be happening in the theatre, at the school, at the home.”