Totally Unnecessary: All-Female Cast Perform NUDE Version of Shakespeare’s Tempest in Central Park

The words “naked” and “Shakespeare” aren’t usually the first words people associate when contemplating the work of England’s most famous playwright, but that’s exactly what one New York theatre group have done, creating an all nude staging of The Tempest. [4] Shakespeare’s plays usually  express an affinity for expressive dress. In “The Taming of the Shrew,” the caddish Petruchio withholds food, sleep and beautiful attire from his new bride as punishment for her forwardness, hoping to change her ways. In “Twelfth Night” and “The Merchant of Venice,” women disguise themselves as men in order to achieve their goals.  If outfits are favorite motifs of the Bard, so… what should we make of a clothes-free production of one of his best-known plays, “The Tempest”? [1]  Why naked? According to co-director Alice Mottola, who headed up such a production performed this week at Summit Rock in New York City’s Central Park, nudity graces the play with themes of body freedom, free expression and equality across cultures. Of course this interpretation only makes sense for a hippie or a soicial justice warrior; maybe that’s exactly what we have here… some kind of deluded libtard… re-interpreting Shakespeare in the light of the social social justice paradigm we see poping everywhere on campuses.  So at least we now we know exactly what we are dealing with…  hippie crap masquerating as liberty. Yep… that’s right folks.

The play, for those unfamiliar, is about an aristocratic crew caught in a storm that brings them to an island rich with magic and isolated inhabitants.  The production company describes the aesthetic choice on its site as such:

This Tempest focuses on the contrast between the harsh restrictions of “civilization” — where political maneuvering costs thrones and lives — and the Edenic, magic-suffused tropical island on which the sorcerer Prospero and his daughter Miranda have lived in exile for twelve years. The contrast will be dramatized not only through performance and staging but also through inventive and integral use of costuming, with the harrowed, conspiring shipwreck victims initially forced to navigate the play’s island setting in constricting outfits suggestive of European aristocracy. [1]

For an actor, reeling off endless lines of Shakespeare is a demanding job. Shouting it over the din of planes, helicopters and ambulance sirens whizzing past New York’s Central Park is even tougher. Doing it all naked however, in front of hundreds of onlookers – who would do that? [5] The play’s “selective use of nudity to dramatize ‘The Tempest’’s central themes of alienation and reconciliation,” the company continues, “builds on a long tradition of free expression in theatrical productions held in outdoor settings.” [1] Toplessness, which the group typically indulge in while reading in the park, is legal everywhere in New York – and while full nudity is usually prohibited, it is allowed in the name of art.  [3] Modern takes on Shakespeare’s plays aren’t uncommon. His stories are often adapted into contemporary novelizations, the most recent slate published by Hogarth, including a forthcoming rewrite of “The Tempest” by Margaret Atwood, confronting the threats posed by global warming.  Another recent political take on The Bard involved an all-women production of “The Taming of the Shrew,” one of the playwright’s “problem plays,” for its arguably oppressive themes. The director, Rebecca Patterson, told The Huffington Post, “I don’t think [casting women] changes the meaning. What it does is liberate the play from simplistic gender politics into its deeper universal humanity.” [1]

We suggest you go in Central Park as a citizen journalist and see for yourself what this ludicrous nude production is all about — the “libtard interpretation of Shakespeare” co-directed by Pitr Strait and co-produced with the Outdoor Co-ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society — of “The Tempest”.