After a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, BODY COUNT, the
award-winning solo show written and performed by Issy Knowles (creator of MODEL
BEHAVIOUR) will make its U.S. premiere at SoHo Playhouse March 3 – 29, 2026 for 21
performances.
The Off-Broadway limited engagement is directed by Alice Wordsworth and part of SoHo
Playhouse’s 2026 International Fringe Encore Series. A Sit-Up Award winner and Popcorn
Award nominee, the show also garnered multiple five-star reviews. Opening night is March 5.
Following in the footsteps of the content creators before her, Pollie is an OnlyFans star
determined to catapult herself to stratospheric fame with her most extreme stunt yet: sleeping
with 1,000 of her subscribers.
Over the last year we’ve witnessed a cultural shift: sex work has become a competitive sport.
As OnlyFans creators performing extreme stunts have dominated our headlines, women
claiming to have slept with 100 to 1,000 men in under 12 hours have divided liberal feminists
all over the world. The internet hasn’t stopped talking about it since.
Is this the doomsday of extremist, capitalist porn? Are competitive OnlyFans models setting
feminism back by behaving exactly as the worst kind of men desire? Or is the moral uproar led
by pearl-clutching kink-shamers who have no place in the new era of radical sex positivity?
BODY COUNT zeroes in on this cultural shift to explore whether it’s ever truly possible to
separate emotion from sex.
As part of the Sit-Up Awards, Emma-Louise Boynton (writer, TedX speaker, journalist and
founder of the award-winning, sell-out live event series and podcast Sex Talks) will be hosting
several post-show-talks at SoHo Playhouse. Joined by guests such as the author of LOST
BOYS and MY PERSONAL JOURNEY THROUGH THE MANOSPEHERE writer James
Bloodworth, among other exciting guests. Visit the website for the latest details.
★★★★★ “A hypnotic performance” — The Telegraph
★★★★★ “A funny, heartfelt examination of women’s sexuality” — Broadway Baby
★★★★ “Arresting, provocative and uncomfortable” — The Scotsman
★★★★ “Blisteringly smart, hilarious and angry” — Theatre Weekly
★★★★ “An energetic one-woman performance that packs a punch” — One4Review
The Edinburgh production was originally directed by Mimi Pattinson, and is now being directed
by Alice Wordsworth.
SoHo Playhouse is located at 15 Vandam Street in New York City. The show contains sexual
content – for adults 18+ only. Run time is one hour. Tickets to all shows are $45.50 (includes
fees). Student tickets are $20 (with valid ID) at the box office on the day of the show on a
space availability basis. Schedule varies – for exact days and times, to purchase tickets, and
for more info go to https://www.sohoplayhouse.com/see-a-show/body-count.
CREATIVE TEAM
Writer/Actor – Issy Knowles
Following the buzz of her previous Fringe hit MODEL BEHAVIOUR, later developed into a TV
pilot and picked up by Carnival Films (producer of multi-award-winning Downton Abbey), Issy
Knowles’ script topped The Brit List in 2022. In 2023, she was named one of Deadline’s ‘British
Writing Stars to Watch.’ Her debut feature, a horror titled Hungry Mouth, is in development with
Meduza, headed by award-winning producers Julia Godzinskaya and Sophie Vickers.
https://www.curtisbrown.co.uk/client/issy-knowles
Director/Dramaturg – Alice Wordsworth
Alice Wordsworth is a freelance theatre and film director. Most recently, she directed The Next
Morning by James Graham, a short film for the National Theatre. She is regularly Associate
Director to Ivo van Hove in the West End; A Little Life, Opening Night and All My Sons. She
has also been Associate Director on; The Seagull (Barbican); Oedipus (West End) and
Macbeth (UK Tour/Washington DC). Alice has a theatre company in Europe called Amsterdam
on Stage, and is excited to be making her New York debut with Body Count.
Producer – Julia Salkin
Julia Salkin is a freelance theatre producer based between London and New York. She runs
Serpentine Productions – a company which aims to platform emerging artists creating bold
new work. Julia is supported by the Stage One Bursary for independent commercial producers,
alongside her work as Associate Producer on Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap in the West
End. Recent credits include Shotgunned (London/UK Tour 2025, Scotland Tour 2026),
MERCURIAL (in development), and medium dead (Edinburgh Fringe 2025).
About SoHo Playhouse
Continuing in the spirit of the theater’s original tenant, Edward Albee and his Playwright Unit
Workshop, SoHo Playhouse (Artistic Director Darren Lee Cole, Managing Director Britt Lafield)
is committed to presenting the brightest and most talented artists from New York, with its
Lighthouse Series, and around the world, with the International Fringe Encore Series, to give
the theater-going audience of New York important stories told with unique style, and evolving
what the concept of Off-Broadway Theater is in the 21st century. For info visit
https://www.sohoplayhouse.com.
About the Sit-Up Awards
The annual Sit-Up Awards help harness the power of theatre to achieve greater social impact
by supporting companies and theatre-makers at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival before, during
and after their productions. Launched in 2018 by Changing Ideas, they aim to encourage
audiences to do something if they are affected by work they have seen on stage. They believe
in the power of theatre to achieve change both in audiences and wider society. So often
momentum ends when the curtain comes down – their mission is to get audiences to sit up
and do something.
Each year’s winner earns a coveted slot at SoHo Playhouse’s International Fringe Encore
Series, along with receiving £5,000. Additional support includes venue, accommodation and
production assistance in New York, plus funding for further audience engagement. Learn more
at https://www.situpawards.org.
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