Nudity and Textuality in Postmodern Performance

When people speak of nudity in theatrical performance, they tend to refer to actions in which actors expose their genital organs to the audience. Even to an entirely female audience, female performers who expose their breasts will appear more “naked” than male performers who expose their bare chests. Nudity in performance refers to the exposure of the most erotically exciting and excitable sexual identifiers of the body, with exposed genitals being the most complete “proof” of the body’s vulnerability to desire and the appropriating gaze of the Other. However, this view of nudity entails some difficulties in relation to theatrical practice. For instance, some performers have used flesh-colored body-stockings to simulate nudity, while others have used prosthetic genitals or breasts as part of a costume which in fact conceals the body of the performer. Consider also those theatrical scenes in which the spectator knows the actor is really nude but cannot see this nudity “sufficiently,” because clever light and shadow “veil” the body. Another device for “suggesting” nudity is to have the actor stand behind a screen upon which he projects his silhouette while he takes off his costume; when he finishes “stripping,” he appears naked to the spectator when he actually is not.

Let us assume that these conventions of theatrical practice entail a costuming or masking of the body and that nudity in performance refers to the unmasked genitals of the performer(s). A performer who wears a mask over her/his face and nothing else causes more “problems” of perception than a performer whose face is completely naked (without even makeup) while the rest of his/her body is completely clothed. In some forms of sadomasochistic performance in private clubs the bodies of performers appear completely costumed (or uniformed) except for the genitals, and such performers appear more “naked” than performers who wear nothing but shorts or bikinis (Rubber Mistresses). So: nudity in performance is complete only to the degree that the spectator sees, not the fact that the performer is “really” naked, but actions in which the “real” body of the performer is signified by the exposure of the performer’s genitals. Theatrical nudity thus awakens complicated “problems” concerning the “reality” of the performing body.

But even this view of nudity in performance is not without difficulties, for it assumes that nudity is above all a matter of showing and seeing; it assumes that the body, the thing made naked, is an entirely visual phenomenon. However, the voice is as much a part of the body as any organ, and the capacity of a body to speak means that a completely unclothed body, with genitals exposed, can become “more naked” or signify even greater vulnerability by speech emanating from it, speech addressed to it, or speech about it. The voice connects language to the body and even makes language a “part” of the body. Language operates through texts in the sense that a text refers to the readability of a signifying practice. Even a completely improvised performance containing no speech is a text insofar as an audience reads it in relation to rules defining the manifestation of performance. Action, including speech, which follows a “script” is an effort to “write” the body through performance. In the performance of a text, an audience will read the performing body (the textuality of the body) in a manner distinct from the reading of an unscripted performance. The two modes of performance project two separate attitudes toward the relation between body and text. A question then emerges: how does each mode of performance construct a different meaning for nudity in performance, a different attitude toward the most complete “proof” of the body’s vulnerability to desire and the appropriating gaze of the Other?

Though it has become more frequent since the 1960s, nudity as I have defined it is still extremely rare in theatrical performance. This rareness is due to the pervasively assumed potential of the nude body in performance to produce severe “misreadings” of its significations. This potential of the nude performing body to “shock,” “incite,” frighten, disgust, or otherwise produce intense emotional turbulence...