Inside D.C. entertainment

'My First Time 'cast's first time talking about their first time: Victoria

November 17, 2010 - 02:00 PM
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Victoria Reinsel (Photo: Courtesy 'My First Time')

My First Time, through Sunday at Flashpoint, presents the first sexual experiences of anonymous internet commenters who submitted their stories to the website MyFirstTime.com. But even though the four actors in the show describe in great detail the good, bad and awful sex of others, their own experiences don't have a place in the show. In fact, they had never even discussed it among themselves, until TBD facilitated a telling of first-time stories before Tuesday's show. Previously: Jameson Freeman. Next up: Victoria Reinsel.

The stories in My First Time are not all titillating, or sweet, or funny, Some of them involve girls being pressured or coerced. Some of them involve rape or incest. Many of them involve regrets. Despite this, Victoria Reinsel says she doesn't judge the people who submitted the stories she portrays.

"I think as an actor it's hard to pass judgment on characters that I'm playing," she says. "I have to try to find a way in that's not judgmental. I have to find something to connect to them, even if i don't understand their rationale, I have to try to decipher why they did something even if it's subconscious. It's hard for me to dislike a character so much. I have to find something to like, even if it's that they're ashamed of what they did, or even proud of it."

Cast member Azania Dungee agrees that judgment is a hindrance, but concedes that it can be difficult not to give in.

"Sometimes you can glean from the way it's written that the person themself is passing judgment," she says. I don't think that it's helpful to dislike them. You have to get into their head and most people don't dislike themselves. I think your first time is something that you tend to pass judgement on anyway."

Victoria's first time:

"It was my high school sweetheart too. We had planned it. It really fucking hurt, and I was bleeding a lot. I got up from the bed like a second after initial penetration and I locked myself in the bathroom for half an hour, and we didn't have actual sex for like a week until I had healed."

"I am so glad I don't have a hymen," says Jamison Freeman. "Just the idea of something actually healing..."

"It's so fucking painful," says Reinsel. "OW."

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