The nudity has struck some theatergoers as so extreme and the sex so prolonged that the actors can hear members of the audience gasp when it begins.
Monday, February 18, 2019
Nudity in the theater? The actors of 'Linda Vista' have it covered
The nudity has struck some theatergoers as so extreme and the sex so prolonged that the actors can hear members of the audience gasp when it begins.
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5 comments:
It's very intriguing to read audience reactions to this. I don't know what it is about american society that is so afraid of nudity and sexual content, but yet so unafraid of it too. We have simultaneously hyper sexualized nudity and sex, but also made it uncomfortable and weird and taboo. It's a constant pull between the two, and I think that it may be the most noticeable in this situation, because everyone is essentially held up to a mirror directly in front of them. There is something so raw about nudity in person, especially one that is real and raw, rather than tv or strip clubs or anything else. It freaks us out, and jars us, and it's something that we all have an involuntary reaction to. I think that including stuff like this in a normalized theatrical experience it might help to heal the american culture's view towards nudity. Many other countries have developed a much healthier outlook, and with the social revolutions rampant, it's time to start working towards this change with shows like this and more normalization of nudity in both sexual and nonsexual situations.
This article raises so many questions: why the hype around nudity? why the hypocrisy about it? how theater plays a role in projecting nudity in an artful way? all these questions have always existed and continue to do so.
Nudity has always been something that has existed in the realm of society as something that is looked down upon in some cases and appreciated or thought to be artful in some others. There has always been this hypocrisy of sorts that has existed around it. People are sub-consciously aware of its presence, know that it is natural , yet look down upon it if it is talked of or brought out in public. That is what happens when it is played in productions.
Even though it is a part of a script, hence it plays some role in the script, yet people have their inhibitions, which makes sense to some but not all degrees.
I find this article to be particularly interesting and highly informative when discussing theatrical practices in especially the rehearsal room. I think that the culture is starting to immensely shift when it comes to talking about and portraying nudity and any type of sensitive content on stage. As the article points out, before actors didn't have as much agency in working environments to demand more when they were put in precarious situations that require an added layer of precaution and care. Even in high school, we would push through difficult scenes that probably should have had care and we did it as if it was just staging. Nudity on stage is intense to say the least, and before anyone passes it off as something that is just theatre, you have to remember that often times these actors are doing these scenes eight times a week in front of all types of audiences, its a place of incredible vulnerability.
I have never read anything about how nudity in theatre works, so reading this article was very interesting. I was glad to read that this company is being very collaborative with their actors as well as having many open discussions with them about they are and are not comfortable with. With the way American’s handle the idea of nudity, I would have thought that nude characters on stage would make the audience feel separate from the story or cause them to intentionally separate themselves from the story. But this is not the case, the article talked about how when they actors are nude on stage it creates a distinct bond with the audience and the actors, which I do think makes a lot of sense. Bullard mentions that if there wasn’t nudity the audience would be able to keep a distance from the story but with the nudity, the show is much more intimate and everyone is involved. Something Thuy said that I would love to know more about is that she has never felt objectified in theatre as she has in film and TV. I would love to hear her talk of this subject more and why she thinks theatre doesn’t elicit the same objectification as film.
Personally I’m not really one for onstage nudity without a really good reason. To me it promotes the idea that an actor’s body is a commodity. And that in theory shouldn’t be true in any case. I do see the benefit in creating an intimate scene. We are not used to seeing nudity in public places and that jarring effect is powerful but sometimes I can’t decide if the purpose is shock or for the semiotics of a nude body. An intimacy coordinator is not something I had ever heard of before here but it seems like such a good idea. Still something seems off to have something onstage that has audience members covering their eyes and ears. Is this level of nudity necessary for the show as a whole? Currently public nudity not widely acceptable and in some cases maybe it should be. And who knows there may be change through the normalisation of nudity, but is this the way to do it?
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