LETTING IT ALL HANG OUT

Actors - and by this term I mean both men and women - are practiced in the art of subverting their own character and values to become other people entirely. Of challenging personal boundaries and limitations.

And there are times they must do things, as a performer, which they might otherwise never have the guts to do in real life.

Like getting naked in front of a group of people.

For myself it seems like it would be both a terrifying and yet tremendously liberating experience to completely let your guard down and - literally - exposing yourself physically to other people while on stage. But nudity alone is only a partial challenge.

How about being sexual? And I don't mean in a pornographic setting, where we watch strippers and sex actors performing sexual acts, I mean being sexual in the performance of a role in a "mainstream" theatrical presentation. Not simply doing the act, but putting an artistic meaning and interpretation behind it.

Talk about "putting yourself out there".

A few columns ago - and yes, it's been a while - I wrote about films which were stretching the boundaries of pornography by introducing explicit sexuality to a mainstream scripted film. The sex was part of the overall story, but in service to the story, not the other way around.

The same goes for the stage version, which the primary difference being that you have an audience ranging from a dozen strangers to potentially hundreds of them, watching you as you expose yourself sexually on stage.

In the stage performance of a play called Uzyna Uzona, the Brazilian theatrical troup known as Teatro Oficina - well known for sexually explicit stagings, features a section in which a group of men and women masturbate enthusiastically on stage. One man, in particular, is aroused enough to cum during the show. (I can't imagine he does this every time. Maybe they take turns? And there's no indication any of the women have an orgasm.)

This show, done in theater in the round, begins with a woman riding a dildo on a bicycle. And that's just the start. It also involves fisting, and other physical contact between the performers which must have been, at the very least, uncomfortable during rehearsals ("Okay, Bob, I want you to roll over onto Steve, face to face, then roll onto Sheila..." "Lydia, don't forget to grab Bill's balls as you say that."). But again, these performances are not strictly pornographic, they are a reflection of what the theater company sees as the world around them.

And, as it turns out, there are many examples of explicit, while not explicitly pornographic, scenes on stage. Actor and athlete Joaquin Ferriera performs a scene, nude with an erection, on stage in Mexico. This rock concert with a band appropriately called Cumshot, featuring a couple fucking on stage - making the explicit point by the bad that they want to stand for something, so why not fucking?. These two actors who have intimate if not explicit contact on stage.

There are, as it turns out, dozens of other examples if you google them. Erection on Stage is a good start, though you'll also get the usual porn connections and primarily male-oriented stage performances.

Acting involves putting yourself out there and taking chances. And being explicitly sexual has got to be the ultimate in challenge and personal commitment.

Cheers.