George,

I really think Nude Theater in Charlottesville is sort of a non issue; it's not that it doesn't exist, of course. UVa did "Hair" as a student production a few years back, there was Teresa Dowell-Vest's performance in "Venus Hottentot" at Live Arts, during which she was nude both at the beginning and end, and then the ending of "Wit" where Linda Zuby ended up nude. I confess that I don't like the ending of "Wit," not because of the nudity, but because I think the woman "going into the light" is just a cop-out ending for a play that had some other interesting things to think about. For instance, intellectually and emotionally, the Vivian Bearing character had been stripped bare during the events that formed the play play (see my differentiation between "nude" and "naked" below).

The HBO film of the play ended differently, and, I think, was better, though different from the script as written.

There's been a bit of gratuitous semi-nudity at Live Arts as well; John Gibson has many directorial talents, but seems to revert to trying to be shocking just for the sake of being shocking, on occasion. I called him on it in the "Cabaret" review a few years back. Then again, it is the nature of theater to sometimes be shocking, with or without nudity. Is Tennessee Williams work (of which I am quite fond) any less shocking simply because there's no nudity? Think about the sinuous walk of Stella as she greets Stanley after their quarrel in "Streetcar"--or of Blanche's desperation and pain, Stanley's rape, and the implications of her young husband's homosexuality. There is emotional nakedness there that can be far more shocking than a nude human body.

I do think folks should be made aware of a nude scene if it's there, and I admit I neglected to make that warning in the "Wit" review, but given what's on television these days, it hardly seemed an issue. And in the context of a theatrical production, where presumably the audience is there by choice, I think it's a freedom of expression issue as well.

As one nudist camp owner once put it (not one of my personal acquaintance, of course) there's "nude" and then there's "naked". The latter implies a certain vulnerability, the former simply the lack of clothing. In the theatrical contexts, some characters are naked, some nude, and some the director doesn't seem sure of. Theater is art, or at least we can hope it is. And, as I see it, so were the Spencer Tunick pictures. People can walk out of theater, and don't have to look at pictures. And the streets were cleared for the photos. If nudity offends folks, they can leave--and then possibly try to find out why!

If you look at Claude Levi-Straus's work on symbolism and cultural anthropology, we realize that clothing itself is essentially a symbol; I contend that a choice not to wear it, in our society, is the same thing. Thus, lack of clothing in a theatrical piece can concei vably be part of the costume design. Consider the story about the nude natives on one of Darwin's expeditions. Fearing they'd be cold, he gave them cloth. They then used the cloth as body decoration, not insulation.

The point from a theatrical perspective is that sometimes, nudity becomes a symbol, just as the other characters' costumes are symbols. When used in that manner, it is part of the art. When used gratuitously for no reason other than tittilation, it becomes just part of bad art--unless, of course, the point of the art was titillation to begin with!

We do not live in a simple world.

Clare Aukofer (electronic mail, November 3, 2001).

Editor's Note: This piece was written at my request in response to a news report that a Virginia landowner had asked a Manassas theater group to bar nudity. Around the same time, I received Tunick pictures from the editor of a newspaper in the Netherlands.