I'd be very interested to hear your post-show assessment of
how well this works in your Othello. I'm on the alert for evidence
supporting or disproving my notion that female nudity is a mistake
in Shakespeare: that as a producer/dramatist WS was very conscious
that because he was writing for boys he would have to get the
effects of nudity such as sexiness, vulnerability, etc. using
verbal means; and that since he was a great poet these verbal
means are both very precise as to the emotions he wants to be
present in the scene and very effective in conveying that presence
through the ear to the inner eye. Real physical nudity interferes
with this-- people look rather than listen and and the emotion
they "get" is much more dependent on their own psychology
and-- as you say-- the immediate social context, than on the
brilliantly crafted words of the scene.
Male nudity, on the other hand, was available to Shakespeare
as a dramatic tool (no pun intended) and I think it pretty much
still works as it did when it was written into the text. (It
probably didn't for the Victorians, who thought the sight of
naked men ought to horrify pure females, if it didn't instantly
corrupt them.) I think we still react to the bare flesh of Poor
Tom, Lear, Coriolanus, Anthony, or Antonio much as the Elizabethans
did, being impressed by manly beauty or moved to pity by their
sudden vulnerability.
I thought, for instance, that the female nudity in Wing-Davies
"Troilus and Cressida" at the NYSF was a major (though
not the only) mistake in an otherwise mostly excellent production
of that difficult but thrilling play. The Othello productions
I've seen that used nudity-- most recently at the American Rep.
Theatre-- alienated me.
I know that the German tourist who saw the original described
how he was moved to pity by Desdemona's vulnerable white breast--
but he only THOUGHT that's what he saw, because Shakespeare's
words made his imagination do the work, and do it perfectly!
I don't object to nudity in other contexts. I've summered at
a New Age camp where nudity is common, skinny dip from time
to time, and consider the nude one of the more interesting subjects
for painting and sculpture. But in the set of interlocking metaphors
that is drama, fleshly literalism is a very tricky element.....
(1/17/05)
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