"I think an artist who chooses to use nudity is trying to communicate something." "Maybe a naked male is threatening maybe it's fear or homophobia," he said. Nicola, by contrast, argues that there is no such thing as gratuitous nudity. "It is when people - actors, producers, theatergoers - are unwilling to admit that truth that its merit, or lack thereof, becomes a hot topic." Jason Butler Harner, an actor who has appeared nude onstage five times, most recently in Jon Robin Baitz's "Paris Letter," said, "There is no question that nudity has been used to try to artistically justify a false moment, or to cover up mediocre playwriting or, more commonly, to sensationalize a play to get people in the seats. Of course, sensationalism and sales can never be far from the topic of public nudity. Will Frears, a director, said, "There seems to be a lot of it about - the 'Take Me Out' revolution." Frears, who recently directed "Terrorism" by the Presnyakov Brothers (in which half the cast was nude) Off Broadway, was referring to Richard Greenberg's celebrated play, about a gay professional baseball player, with a nearly 10-minute all-male shower scene. "I think you could say that gay people coming out of the closet has paralleled the arrival of the penis onstage," said James Nicola, artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop. Terrence McNally's 1994 play "Love! Valour! Compassion!" about the relationships of eight gay men contained a memorable scene in which the cast went skinny-dipping. But by the mid-'90s, off the momentum of the gay revolution, theaters began to produce plays that took a full-frontal view of gay sexuality. In the '80s, onstage nudity even started to seem a bit passé. In the 1960s and '70s, American theater saw a surge of equal-opportunity stripping. Of course, nudity onstage is no longer anything shocking in and of itself. In a count of the nude bodies seen in those shows, 40 or so belonged to men and only about 10 belonged to women. "I was just saying to a friend recently, 'What's with all the male frontal nudity, especially the last couple seasons?"' said Marin Ireland, a busy off-Broadway actress who has been entirely naked onstage twice.Īn informal examination of Broadway and Off Broadway shows and a survey of longtime theater industry people showed that over the last 15 years, there have been about 25 plays with full frontal nudity. NEW YORK - Getting naked used to be women's work.In the last decade, though, nudity on and off Broadway has taken a decided turn for the male.
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