Approaching Nudity on Stage: its function as Dramatic Expression

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to interpret the meaning and function of theatrical nudity in the modern stage. We know that several performances in the latter part of the 1960's attempted radical expressions by displaying performer's nudity, but today its efficiency as a revolutionary tool has been lost. The question we have to ask here is: How should we understand the meaning of nudity presented in realistic ways in serious drama?

In modern realistic plays, in which a lot of sexual matters were dealt with, the practical nude was always “superfluousness”, because the playwrights tried to show the restrained “naked” humanity through their own strategies. And the introduction of the real “naked” body seems to force us to explore the possibility of reconciliation between “the Nude” as a dramatic idea and “the Naked” as radical material, to borrow words from Kenneth Clark. Then what is the illusion the audience might get from it? How could the nudity manage the problems from its “external significations”?

Refering to Dürrenmatt's Meteor as a solution to those questions, I would like to consider the new strategic systems in relation to dramatic nudity.