Unclothed. Unfeathered. Unfurred. Unadorned. They’re all synonyms for the word naked. But the dictionary may be the only place where nakedness is presented as, well, a bare fact. Ever since Adam and Eve found fig leaves, the sight of human beings in their birthday suit has provoked every emotion from shame to anger to reverence. As America has loosened up on the morality front, more skin has been showing up on the street and in the movie theater. So maybe nudity is finally no big deal in America, or maybe not?
This week, 35 years after actors in the musical Hair appeared naked on stages in New York, LA, and even in Boston, a Massachusetts theater company was forced to wage a legal fight for the right to bare it all in that same musical.
Guests:
Mark Storey, author of Cinema au Naturel: A History of Nudist Film
Howard Burchman, president of the Provincetown Theater Company
Barbara Rushmore, activist in Provincetown, Massachusetts
Jennifer Warnes, played the lead in the L.A. production of Hair in 1969