Would you get naked? As university drama students, getting naked was always going to be issue. From the very beginning of our process many people gave us negative comments, saying it was a clique and ask why would even consider do it. I must admit I had my preconceptions too at first however I feel in our performance, we showed them that getting ‘naked’ exposing our bodies and insecurities was so much more than what they first thought. It was down to personal choice how much we could expose ourselves with the essence of the piece needing us to be at our most vulnerable. We did not sexualise the body, in theory we wanted to desexualise it. The idea of this however will never be fully realised as we cannot control other people’s thoughts on the naked body. The way we presented ourselves, our body language and a very bare space I felt unsexualised the space. We did not highlight, the need for anyone in the audience to look at us specifically, and audience members could have gone the whole performance without even seeing anyone naked if they so wished. I was surprised how well both us as performers and the audience coped with baring all.

In relation to this, I have researched into artist Nic Green who created a performance called Trilogy (2010) in which she broke down the body. Although the goal of her piece was a response to feminism, woman in todays society and a political performance. A lot of what she did, relates to our performance. She desexualised the body by using an ‘unselfconscious committed style of performance’ in which ‘the nudity is rapidly normalised’. (Aston and Harris, 2013,p.107). Getting naked also ‘marked progressive empowerment'(Aston and Harris, 2013) the longer the body is seen the less sexual it becomes, as the naked self becomes more of a uniform. Our piece in a way reflected this, by own change in states throughout the piece. I personally felt empowered by the end of the piece, it was such a surreal experience.

Works Cited:

Aston, E and Harris, G. (2013) A Good Night Out for the Girls: Popular Feminisms in Contemporary Theatre and Performance. London: Palgrave Macmillian.