The Bard goes bare: The Tempest performed naked in New York

[brooklynite]

The Guardian:

On top of a hill in New York’s Central Park about a dozen women flit about naked, as two more play a pagan folk tune on the violin and acoustic guitar. The sunlight is slowly disappearing, and murmurs of the oncoming cold are quieted as on the makeshift stage, a storm erupts.

This is an all-woman, fully nude, abridged adaptation of William Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest, performed in part to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. Produced by the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society (they go by Topless Book Club for short), this is the first of two consecutive performances.

The show’s other big aim, they say, is to promote the normalisation of the naked female body. For six years, the group has met to read books and have picnics while exercising the right to enjoy the outdoors topless (which the law in New York allows), in an effort to encourage body freedom. This is their first production of a play.

“I said: why don’t we just do Shakespeare, and do The Tempest, and do it naked?” says Charles Ardai, the play’s producer, after the performance. “And the reactions from the audience was wonderful – the initial discomfort, and then getting used to it and then just seeing human beings.”

If memory serves, women weren't permitted to act in Shakespeare's plays (even the women's roles) when they were first produced.

[villager]

1. Memory? I guess I'd have a hard time recalling what happened 375 years ago, myself.

(Considering the need to consult the calendar for stuff that happened last month!

Thanks for posting.

Dang, going to be out NY way, too. So much to see in yer fair city...

[jberryhill]

2. Theatrical Costume Designers Local 117 Pickets Show In NYC

Film at 11.

[MowCowWhoHow III]

3. Future productions

Much ado about nothing
The taming of the eeewwww!
Titties Andronicus