Naked People Everywhere. Part 1 of 57

Several of the first shows that I worked on in college had an element that was a bit different from the plays I worked on in High School or Community Theatre.

Naked People.

Some were on stage, some were off stage and even a few just wandering about here and there.

Times were a bit different, it was the middle 1970’s and the people producing the plays were not all that far removed from the 60’s Theatre scene.

For an eighteen year old this was very different, interesting and of course fun.

But just a few years later I remember that the attitudes had changed and nobody wanted to be naked onstage anymore.

One memorable play at UB was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven”, a compilation several different Shakespeare plays cut and pasted together to make new scenes.

They had done “Shakespeare Heaven” and “Son of Shakespeare Heaven” in the years just before I got to college.

One section of the play was a take off of a game show, another was a spoof of the movie The Godfather, plus there were several other skits and monologues all mixed together.

In one scene an actor walks in dressed as a monk speaking lines from “Timon of Athens” as I remember.

As the scene progressed the actor completely undresses, sits down at a small table, puts on make-up, then puts on a bra and other women’s undergarments and puts on finally a wedding dress.

The play being “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” everyone had a wedding dress on at the end.

One actress was a Hawaiian Bride wearing just a grass hula skirt and a lea of flowers, with just a bit of tape to keep the lea in place.

The funniest naked person in the show was the actor who played the various statues.

All he wore was white make-up head-to-toe.

If the statue he was doing had a fig leaf then he had one, a helmet and small wings on his ankles when he was Mercury, but other then that he wore just the make-up and a smile.

The play was so popular that it was held over for an extended run.

For the extra run of the play an actress joined the naked guy and did famous paired statues.

I remember when they were taking the cast photo there at the end of the front row were they two naked people.

I wonder if Kodak printed the photos or are they in some lost back room with lots of other fun pictures?

A few other plays my first year had an occasional naked person or two, but it was “Bride of Shakespeare Heaven” that had the most and was enjoyable even without all the naked people, although I did not mind.

Not all the naked people were on stage, but back then it seemed at times that everyone backstage was running around naked, actors, crew and few other oddballs.

More fun with naked people to come in Part 2.