Viewing the Pornographic Theatre: Explicit Voyeurism, Artaud and Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella

Abstract

In a piece for the online Examiner in 2009, Jana Monji describes what she perceives as a trend towards increased onstage nudity in the offerings provided by Los Angeles-area theatres. Her piece is ostensibly a response to the premiere of Hangin’ Out: That Naked Musical, and she asks many of the now-standard questions about nudity in the theatre: to wit, ‘Is the amount of nudity on Los Angeles stages a good thing? Is it voyeuristic? Is it a sign of exhibitionism?’ Martin Esslin asked a similar set of questions as long ago as 1968: ‘Is [nudity] a good thing or a bad thing for art? Is it a symptom of declining morals? A sign of social decadence?’ In the late 1960s, Esslin placed himself firmly on the side of what he saw as a new sexual ethics for the time period. Closer to the present, Monji proposes that while nudity ‘can at times be entertaining’, more often than not it ‘detracts’ from the show’s actual topics. ‘Then again’, she allows, sometimes ‘gratuitous nudity’ is ‘the whole point of the show’.