The Wrap with Two Gay Guys: The full monty edition

is that a cat in the background?Or is it just pointless special effects? ; )

I definitely chalk up the adverse reaction to nudity on stage to the "all nudity is wrong and shameful" attitude so pervasive in American culture - especially when it comes to male nudity. I completely agree with Brent (if I understand his point) that nudity itself is not the problem - that it can be appropriate in both serious plays (Equus, Angels In America, Take Me Out) and light entertainment (Naked Boys Singing, Party, Coming Out Party), depending upon the goals/intentions of the author.

In a serious play, the author is faced with the challenge of getting the audience to see past the novelty of the nudity, so that they can focus on the surrounding drama and emotions of the situation. In Equus, Peter Shaffer succeeds by initially presenting the nudity during the awkward attempt at coupling, allowing the audience to deal with their initial response, before moving into the extremely dark, raw emotional place that lays bare the soul of Alan Strang. Similarly, in Take Me Out, Richard Greenberg gives the audience several early scenes of nudity in the lockerroom and showers. Then, when the climactic struggle occurs in the showers in the second act between Darren Lemming and Shane Mungitt, the audience can focus on the emotions of the characters and the dynamics between them, rather than on the fact that they're watching two wet naked men grappling with each other.

On the lighter side, while hardly an artistic triumph or breakthrough, Naked Boys Singing definitely accomplishes what it sets out to do. If I remember correctly, the show was initially conceived by Robert Schrock, who was running the Celebration Theater in Los Angeles at the time. The theater had been in the red for a while, and Schrock wanted to put on an original show that would make a ton of money and allow the theater to continue to bring worthwhile gay theater to L.A. He looked at the past history of the shows that had been successful for them, and found that they had all featured male nudity, and thus Naked Boys Singing was born. The show has a long list of writers (including Bruce Vilanch) but it's obvious that the draw was meant to be the naked men, rather than the content of the material. Judging by the fact that, ten years later, there are still productions running across the country and around the world, I'd say the show is definitely fulfilling the desire of the intended audience.

That is, when the private parts aren't doing anything in particular.  There's definitely a desensitization point, where the audience stops staring at the equipment and starts listening to what the characters are saying.  Usually it seems to be 3-5 minutes, as long as no new meat enters to distract the audience again...

A few years back there was a play done here in Los Angeles that starred Jeff Stryker - the professed straight gay-porn star of the 70s and 80s, and while the play was predictably awful, what I remember most is that after the play ended, this aging porn star stood at the exit door, wearing a leather jacket and nothing else, with his equipment at somewhat half-hearted attention, and very earnestly shook the hand of each of us leaving the theater.  

The house was packed with almost all gay men that night.

But Man, at that moment, did I wish I had some hand sanitizer.

 

 

About time for a new vlog (12/8).  This one was funny though, what I recall of it at this distance.  It's always comical to see how Puritanism comes out in gay men, and it's almost always true that--in a couple--one is more puritannical than the other (I know!)

Way past time for a new vlog gentlemen. So many things you could be commenting on. Get to it!

Theatre isn't just a literary medium, it's a visual one. Physicality and eroticism have an important function in that, not just as "spectacle" to lure the viewer into paying attention to the stage, but as a statement in themselves.

As a heterosexual example, I think of the beautiful scene in Tom Stoppard's rock n' roll when a woman, facing death by cancer, strips herself naked during a scene with her husband. The sight of her body, lovely and mortal, is Stoppard's argument for the value of an individual life as posed against the abstract intellectual values proposed by the husband.

Of course we all know that bad gay plays often rely on cheap male nudity to fill seats. But bad plays also often rely on too many overwritten speeches -- that doesn't mean that words are in themselves a "distraction" onstage.

No, not "distant gay traces" -- it's distingué traces!

Why has there not been a new "Two Gay Guys" since the Flood?  Has Brent done away with poor, prudish (though talented) Michael?  I live in Florida with an old, slow computer (with no sound) during the winter and can't watch them anyway.  Then I come home in March but have no vlog since "The Full Monty."  What gives?

Oh, and Michael. . .do you recall how you turned aside my suggestion that Sheldon on "The Big Bang" had every appearance of being gay--saying it didn't much matter as the show seemed doomed to an early extinction anyway?  I've had to eat a lot of my words over the past fifty-eight years too.   Miles