A Sign of Madness
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — A public display of one of Shakespeare’s classics is offering a very revealing performance, but the participants said it is not about shock value.
CBS2 was there for a clothed dress rehearsal for the dressed-down performance of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” by Torn Out Theater.
The all-female cast will be all nude come showtime next month inside Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The group also performed earlier this year in Central Park.
“We were really interested in getting an audience to be able see nudity as non-sexual, non-threatening, and eventually not even strange,” said director Pitr Strait. “By the end the play, it’s normal.”
As CBS2’s Valerie Castro reported, the actors said it sends a message of body positivity.
“It’s being courageously vulnerable and generous with yourself as an artist, first and foremost, and saying, I’m doing this for this purpose,” said Suzannah Gratz.
Getting an entire cast of actresses to go nude for the entire production. I see the Operations Division of the Grand Male Conspiracy has been quite successful. This could be right up there with selling pole dancing as a legitimate form of exercise. If only Public Relations was as on the ball.
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ReplyDeleteDid you ever see any of the "St. Trinian's" films? (Inspired by Ronald Searles' cartoons about an English girls' school where the students are all criminals of one sort or another, right down to the ten-year-olds.) Alastair Sim played the headmistress (in drag), and also the headmistress' brother, a bookmaker.
The films often allude in passing to the many illegal or questionable operations of the students - counterfeiting, moonshining, burglary, bookmaking...
The third film includes a performance of Hamlet bh the girls which includes striptease.
Rich: Sounds bizarre, almost like modern America.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. The cast list of Tempest is usually 12, comprising 10 men and two women (though Ariel, being a sprite, could be either male or female.)
ReplyDeleteSo this is going to be all women? All nude? I wonder who will play which part; will the ugliest (or the most beautiful) play Caliban, or would that be sexist?
Seems to me like it would be difficult to tell characters apart, if they're all female and all nude; but then, I suppose making sense out of Shakespeare is old-fashioned anyway.
Perhaps Prospero, being a powerful wizard, will sport a rainbow-colored bush; I'll wait for photos, if that's the case!
(I'm filing this entry under, "Degeneration of the West Continued.)