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As a fetish actress and director for the past eight years, Soma, 39, has won multiple trophies from the AVN (Adult Video News) Awards, often referred to as "the Oscars for porn." In her personal life, she's a domme and matriarchal figure for what Fat Mike calls their "polyamorous family," and her presence in a room is undeniably magnetic — maternal and comforting with a no-nonsense edge, and incredibly self-possessed. NOFX superfans have become familiar with the chain and lock around the frontman's neck; Soma Snakeoil holds the key.
They're also parents to two girls, ages 10 and 15, each from a previous relationship. The family lives in Noe Valley, and enjoys hiking and riding bikes around the city.
The couple have become outspoken advocates for BDSM during their five years together — they maintain a fully-stocked dungeon in their house — but Home Street Home marks the first time they'll present it in such a public space, and it's clear they took it as a chance to de-fang sex work for audiences that have never experienced this world. In one scene, teenage runaway Sue (whose induction into the world of gutter punks, and subsequent coming of age, make up the play's central narrative arc) learns about safe words and other kinky sex vocabulary from her new friends. It's one of the more upbeat and lighthearted numbers, with cast members suggesting new safe words ranging from "kung fu" to "Sarah Palin."
"My heart is very much with sex workers, and I wanted to make sure we were showing the dignity behind what we do — that you can be selling your body on a street corner and still have pride," Soma says. "I think things are changing slowly, but there's just still such a stigma about sex work in Western culture." The actress-director landed the job of co-writer after sketching out some characters inspired by her time as a teenager living in a punk house in Virginia. She's worked in performance art for as long as she can remember, and been part of the fetish world for nearly a decade. But Home Street Home is her first foray into more traditional theater: "A seven-minute choreographed thing on stage with an exploding dildo is a lot different from something with two hours of finely crafted music," she says with a laugh. "Although it kind of comes from the same place internally, if that makes sense."
As for BDSM, Soma saw the musical as an opportunity to dispel misconceptions. "Obviously we wanted this to be entertaining, and there's some salacious stuff on stage, but I think we tried not to sensationalize it too much," she says. "We really do show the intimacy between people, and when it comes to BDSM, we wanted to show the respect within the community, the love and intention, the focus on safety and consent."
Other aspects of the journey Sue undertakes in Home Street Home are harder to swallow. One song serves as the character's ode to cutting, a nonjudgmental explanation of how self-harm has helped the 16-year-old grapple with the considerable injustices and abuses the world has dealt her. (After workshopping the play at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center in Connecticut in January, Burkett says the mostly "geriatric" audience loved it — with a few audience members noting that the scene helped them understand for the first time why people would intentionally harm themselves.)
The cutting theme is semi-autobiographical, Soma says. She had a long-term partner who cut himself frequently and deeply, sometimes landing in the hospital. Soma believes BDSM, as a "transformative experience," helped break him out of the cycle. Though Soma did not personally experience the nightmarish home life from which the play's central character is trying to escape, the playwright did face "all kinds of traumatic sexual things when I was younger," she says. She eventually hopes to found a nonprofit that would be associated with the musical, to provide resources for girls in unhealthy sex work situations.
"I have a heart for survivors, for sure, and I think one of the exciting things for me about the play is that it's so hopeful — that message of 'Don't dwell on it.' There are a few things [Mike and I] try to live by, and I think flavors of them come through in the writing. One of them is 'Living well is the best revenge.'"
So: a musical about punks and BDSM written by a punk and a dominatrix. Makes sense, right? Well, it probably wouldn't — and it almost certainly wouldn't have seen the light of day — without Jeff Marx.
A lyricist and composer with a thoughtful, welcoming way about him, Marx was something of a wunderkind when he created Avenue Q, the musical starring Sesame Street-inspired puppets riffing on decidedly adult themes. It won the 2004 Tony Award for Best Musical, and went on to become one of the longest-running musicals in Broadway history (it ended its Broadway run in September 2009, and opened two weeks later off-Broadway, at New York's New World Stages, where it's still playing). When a touring version of the stage show came to L.A. about four years ago, the songwriter threw a cast party. There, a friend of a friend introduced him to Mike and Soma.
"I remember [Mike] told me, 'I'm a punk musician,' and I had no idea who he was," says Marx, now 44. "I was asking, 'Oh, cool, so you do gigs and stuff?'" He laughs, recalling their first meeting. He didn't know anything about punk before collaborating with the duo, he says, as his tastes skew more toward the "Billy Joel, Carole King, James Taylor" side of the musical spectrum. (The creators have discovered since then that they all can agree on the Beatles.) Marx certainly didn't know that Burkett had seen Avenue Q three times, and was such a fan of the play that NOFX had been including a song Marx wrote for it, "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist," in the band's live sets for five years.
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