Annie Sprinkle began her career in 1973 as the star of the adult film Teenage Covergirl. Over the past three decades, she has evolved from X-rated performer—and prostitute and stripper—into a respected pundit on the intersections between human sexuality, art, politics and spirituality. Always zaftig and occasionally cinnamon-haired, she was a crucial contributor to the sex-positive feminism of the 1980s, and her body of work encompasses everything from a starring role in Nick Zedd’s experimental film War is Menstrual Envy to such books as Dr. Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex. A celebration of the female body, her performance art piece Public Cervix Announcement invited audiences, as the title suggests, to check out her most intimate parts. Sprinkle, a self-proclaimed “metamorphosexual” and one of the world’s few porn stars with a PhD, now lives in San Francisco with her wife, artist Elizabeth Stephens. The couple collaborate on Sprinkle’s latest show, Exposed: Experiments in Love, Sex & Death, a multimedia extravaganza that promises to “blow your hearts open.”

So you recently married your partner, Elizabeth, in Calgary?

I did—in January. You can see the video of our wedding on our site, www.loveartlab.org. We’re doing an art project about love over the course of seven years, and each year we combine a wedding with performance art. They’re experimental weddings; each one has a different theme and colour. This was our third, and the colour was yellow. We love Canada. We were married by Nomi Whalen, who has married more than 6,000 Canadian couples. It was very moving to get legally married.

If this is already your third wedding, what difference does the legality make?

In California we’re not legally allowed to get married, and you feel like there’s something wrong with you, that you’re not a full citizen—you don’t have equal rights because you’re too weird or because of other people’s judgments. I was crying as I crossed into Canada because here I’m a full person, an equal. I’ve had sex with 3,500 men, back when I was a sex worker, but that doesn’t count. I still don’t get rights because I fell in love with a woman.

How long have you been together?

Five years.

How do the weddings differ from a everyday hetero wedding?

The weddings are really special. People leave with a lot of hope; they feel good. It balances out all the news about war; it’s a reminder that we can all get more love. Everyone knows the story or narrative format of a wedding: the processional, the vows, the cutting of the cake, etc. So we invite artists and guests to collaborate on the creation—people can volunteer to be flower girls or make decorations. Artist Angela Ellsworth makes our bouquet each year, and it’s more of a sculpture than flowers. At the ceremony everyone (including our guests) wears the same colour, and each ceremony has a theme: for example, security, survival, power, sexuality, compassion, intuition or wisdom.

I’m a bit surprised you chose Calgary to get married in—it’s sort of like the Texas of Canada.

Everyone says that about Calgary, but the artists there are fantastic. We worked with a great organization called One Yellow Rabbit, and they could not have been better. But we also thought we were needed in Calgary, that they needed a little queer. We had a great bachelorette party in one of the artists’ houses—everyone was dyeing their hair to go with our yellow theme, and we made dozens of beautiful cupcakes that looked like breasts. It was a beautiful wedding.

So you and Elizabeth are doing Exposed together. What makes it different than other shows you’ve done?

This show’s about love, while my other shows were specifically about sex. I am still a sexologist, but sex comes under the umbrella of love, so now I’m dealing with a bigger umbrella. I’m interested in sexuality but not in a mainstream, commercial porn kind of way—I’m looking at sexuality from an older woman’s perspective and a social perspective.

Is this your first collaborative theatre piece?

I’ve generally done one-woman shows, but when I did Metamorphosex, there were 26 other women in it. Beth has done performance art, but this is her first theatre piece.