nominated as "speaker of the year" by Readers of Campus Activities Magazine.

Welcome to Catharsis Productions, creators of the popular touring sexual assault awareness program, SEX SIGNALS!

The presentation differs from traditional sexual assault prevention programs in that it incorporates improvisational comedy, education, and audience interaction to provide a provocative look at dating, sex, and the core issue of consent. The ninety-minute two-person play begins by taking an irreverent and funny look at the awkwardness of dating as the actors represent each gender's perspective.

Through improvisation and audience interaction, the play explores how social pressures, unrealistic fantasies, power inequity, and false preconceptions of the other sex all contribute to the tensions often found in dating. Then, through a semi-improvisational scene, the presenters demonstrate how these, and other factors can lead to sexual assault. The scene enables audiences to recognize the true nature of rape, and to place full responsibility with the rapist, however much they may like him. Furthermore, SEX SIGNALS challenges audiences who have mislabeled coercive behavior as seduction, and to reexamine a culture that too often holds victims of rape responsible for their own vulnerability.

Importantly, the play closes on an empowering note, encouraging the audience to both provide solutions for creating safer and healthier interpersonal sexual relationships, and brainstorm how they could positively intervene as bystanders when they witness a friend or stranger in a vulnerable situation that could lead to sexual violence.

Since 2000, then, the presentation has been performed over 1600 times at over 400 colleges throughout the country and dozens of military installations around the world. It has become one of the most popular programs on sexual assault awareness among college audiences, military personnel, and educators.

With "Sex Signals," Catharsis Productions is also proud to have received a 2007 Moxie Award from the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault for creative efforts to end sexual violence.