Student Actors Learn To Bare All for Audiences

As the weather gets colder and colder in Cambridge, more and more people are taking their clothes off—on stage, at least.

Two shows recently seen in the Loeb Experimental Theater featured nudity. Six Degrees of Separation, directed by Matthew J. Weinstock ’05, used nudity because the script called for it. Faust’s script does not include nudity, but the adaptation written and directed by Clint J. Froehlich ’05, who is also a Crimson editor, employed six nude extras in the beginning and at the end of the show.

Froehlich, who says he fell in love with Goethe’s play when he read it a year ago, wanted to reinvent the play for a modern context.

“It’s really useful to take classics of the theater, be it European or American, and make them about contemporary issues,” he said. “When looked at in a contemporary context, you can make Faust about anything you want while still being faithful to the language.”

The contemporary issue Froehlich wanted to tackle was how “socially normative forces” play a role in “black female subjectivity,” two subjects that allowed him to bring some of his academic interests—as well as dance and movement—into his adaptation.

Besides this textual aspect, Froehlich also focused on music for his adaptation. It was from this part of his adaptation that the idea to use nude actors in the show first occurred to him.

“The nudity in the end first came to me as an aesthetic choice,” he said. “I thought it would be interesting to have a cast of nude actors not in the rest of the show to come on stage with Faust and I think it was originally an aesthetically motivated decision.”

Because Froehlich wanted his adaptation to examine the way individual bodies move through space and what that means in contemporary society, he wanted to use the nudes as a way to show the audience the intricacies of the body, especially after they witness the horrors done to Gretchen.

He acknowledged, however, that although his initial concept was important, “it wasn’t enough for me to justify doing that.”

The purpose of the nudes crystallized as Froehlich talked about the idea with other people involved in the production, including some of his designers. The idea of individual bodies was reinforced by the integration of bodies into the set, which included red body prints of the cast.

Because the six extras for the play were all white, Froehlich further conceptualized their presence to echo the plot.

“In the beginning, we had these naked white people bearing down on Gretchen, and it became a force of white power and white beauty, which was discussed in a show through a Cornel West monologue,” Froehlich said. “Like Faust, at the end of the play they realize the violence that they had done, and they become different bodies and different people that can overcome these structures they were a part of.”

These “normative structures” that Faust and Gretchen wrestle with in the play were a main factor in Froehlich’s decision to use nude actors. “My main goal was this sort of unsubtle revealing of these structures through pop performances and bold images to inspire the audience to make changes in their lives and in the world around them,” he said.

Aoife Spillane-Hinks ’06, who played Mephistopheles in the production, and who did not appear nude in the play, felt the nudity was integral to the play in the bold statement it made to the audience.

“In a way it was the bookends of the production—the beginning scene was very demonic, berating the victim of the situation, Gretchen. In the end they were voices of hope and struggle,” she said. “There was something almost universal about the image—there was something ugly about its use in the beginning, and something pure in the end.”

For Froehlich, the process of finding the six nude extras in Faust was very informal.

“It involved asking friends, asking friends of friends, asking my staff to find people for me,” he said. “I ended up with the amount I wanted, and they were really cooperative, comfortable folks. It was the best way to approach it.”

There were six extras who appeared nude in Faust, including Jane H. van Cleef ’06, the show’s costume designer. For her, appearing nude was only embarrassing during the first few rehearsals; as van Cleef said, “After that, I was just sort of jaded. You become shockingly jaded to it, and it was fun.”

The comfort level was such that the nude performers did naked stretches backstage before the rehearsals, and the cast became very nonchalant about it. Van Cleef admitted that some jitters returned on opening night, but she found that she could channel her jitters elsewhere.

“I was really angry about the status quo and how Mephistopheles used cultural norms to screw over Gretchen, so I channeled my embarrassment into righteous indignation,” van Cleef said.

Danielle B. Sanzone ’03, another performer who appeared nude in Faust, explained that the only moment of embarrassment came from the fact that the nude performers were supposed to look straight ahead.

“It was only embarrassing when you discovered that you were staring at someone that you’ve known since freshman year and that you didn’t intend for them to see you naked,” she said. “As long as you didn’t know the one person you were staring at, it was fine.”

Faust had to undergo a lengthy approval process involving both the Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) and the American Repertory Theater (ART). Froehlich discussed with both Marcus Stern, faculty directory of the HRDC, and Rob Orchard, Executive Director of the ART, who were concerned that the students involved in the production were informed and protected.

“We wanted to make sure there was no coercion,” Orchard said.

Stern further emphasized the point by adding, “We wanted to make sure that the director is careful and sensitive in the way he incorporated this element into rehearsals and performances. We want to make sure that any actor who agreed to appear nude in a show always has the option to change their mind at any point during the process.”

Orchard and Stern also discussed with Froehlich his artistic approach and what he wanted to accomplish.

“I wanted to make sure he had the appropriate conceptual process,” Orchard said.

Orchard asked Benjamin D. Margo ’04-’05, president of the HRDC and a Crimson editor, to investigate existing university-wide policy regarding nudity on stage. There were none, and so Orchard, Stern and Margo more or less developed a policy.

Margo echoed Stern and Orchard’s primary concern.

“The HRDC and Loeb Drama Center policy is designed to ensure that no performer is ever made to feel uncomfortable. The audiences were warned about the content of the show, also a matter of policy,” he said.

As the director, Froehlich was pleased that the process ran very smoothly. “At first I thought this was just them power-tripping me,” he said, “but eventually I realized that people on the HRDC board were genuinely concerned with how it was going to affect people in audition and the rest of the cast.”

When asked about whether shows that feature nudity in the future would undergo a similar process, Orchard, Stern and Margo agreed that the process will remain in place. Stern said, “As for future productions, I believe that we would continue to use the same process and criteria for monitoring nudity in productions.”

He stressed, “The issue is not censorship, or aesthetic judgment, the issue is again first and foremost the safety, comfort and protection for the students involved. We want to make sure that all shows remain an unpressured and positive experience for the students.”