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Writer, performer and trained hypnotherapist Christopher Green has written an immersive new play examining the intersection between theatre and therapy. Chris’s character leads a fictional self-help group for pornography addicts. He says he has been careful to reflect the true ‘ineloquent, eloquent’ language of ‘confession’. ‘Prurience’ is being performed at South Bank Centre.

As part of ‘Fair Field’, Francesca Millican-Slater has written ‘The Confession of the Seven Sins’. Here, she performs an extract from ‘Pride’, which blends the language of the modern television talent show with the language of Piers Plowman. For Millican-Slater, confessing is a fashionable thing to do online, and there is a ‘certain deliciousness in admitting to a bad thing’.

Writer and literary critic DJ Taylor explores confessions in literature across the centuries from St Augustine, right up to ‘Confessions of a Window Cleaner’. He offers his ‘rules of confession writing’, arguing that the more artistic a confession, the less likely it is to be genuine. Some Victorian pornography, however, is so boring he suspects it might be an accurate representation.