I've been a stage actor for 10 years, but this summer was the first time I've ever really considered taking a role with two explicit sex scenes and nudity. Despite my apprehensions — how my body would look, how the role would change the way people perceive me, in theater and in real life — my biggest concern was the potential for lameness. Sex delivered badly onstage is just as depressing as sex done badly in real life, exponentiated by the presence of an audience.
I really wanted the part, the lead in a sexy comedic romance between two brainy people more comfortable quipping than feeling, just like everyone I know. The premise was that a woman at her sixth college reunion starts up a relationship with a virginal 18-year-old freshman, and awkwardness ensues. It was called "The Campsite Rule," after columnist Dan Savage's advice for older or more experienced persons in sexual relationships with mentees: Leave them better than you found them.
It was hilarious and new, produced by the Washington Rogues and written by my friend and Post colleague Alexandra Petri — stuff no one else is saying about young people's relationships. And it was wicked hot. When we did a test reading for an audience, the producer noticed couples snuggling closer as the sex scene progressed, even though we were just standing there, fully clothed, reading from scripts.
Advertisement
The play contains stage directions such as: She puts the condom on him. Good luck staging this."
As with that stage direction, every script is a challenge, and every production, an answer to it. Theater is about effective illusion. There are hundreds of ways of staging the application of a condom without being pornographic — heck, the whole scene could take place in pitch dark — but a lot of those solutions will vaguely disappoint the audience, who will conclude we couldn’t figure out how to fake it cleverly, or we didn’t have the courage to go further with it.
But nudity isn't faked. That's the person's body . Mine, in this case.
So when the director, Megan Behm, asked me what I’d be comfortable with, I didn’t want to be the limiting factor, the one who wasn’t willing to go all out — the reason the scene would ring false. Megan said that the show would be funny and fun, not exploitative; that she wouldn’t let me look stupid or slutty — so I told her I’d trust her and would do anything the show needed. I could still chicken out, but it would be that: chickening out.
Advertisement
I wanted this role, for all the reasons above, and one more: I am interested in exploring where funny and sexy intersect. In our culture, women's sexuality doesn't tend to be funny. Women's bodies are almost never a punchline the way men's can be. For better or worse, there is a cultural seriousness to female nudity. And when women act sexy, at best they are setups for punchlines: Meg Ryan's extended fauxgasm in "When Harry Met Sally" wasn't the joke; it was the tension-building prelude . "I'll have what she's having" was the joke.
What’s more, things generally aren’t funny and sexy simultaneously, as if those two parts of the brain can’t fire together. I was hoping that this show — written by, directed by and featuring funny women — would be able to bridge that gap.
Megan had never directed a sex scene , but she was an experienced fight choreographer, which she assured us was the same thing. Matthew Sparacino, my younger scene partner, was a stranger to me until I started wearing only underpants in his presence and we simulated — and coordinated — cunnilingus and boinking.
Advertisement
In Shakespeare, comic fight scenes are punctuated with dialogue, while tragic fight scenes are wordless. Our show was like that, but the fisticuffs were connubial. There were two sex scenes, one long and slapstick, with dialogue built around each stage of the process in a dorm room’s twin bed; for much of it I was standing in my undies with my dress caught over my head as I frantically struggled to remove it.
For the bit to remain funny, Megan discovered that the dress had to stay on enough to cover my breasts. It had to stay there long enough for the audience to realize its getting stuck wasn’t a technical mistake (live theater!), but if I ever pulled it all the way up, the sudden emergence of my parts would distract from the funny dialogue.
Which was why we ended up killing the nudity entirely. A naked actor is all the story the audience can process for some time. If you’re not convinced, try it at home.
Advertisement
So: I didn’t have to show my breasts, but it wasn’t because I was lame. Later, I was topless, though, beneath that flimsy, shifting sheet, which left a frisson of danger. But that scene was so carefully choreographed I felt safe, safe enough to pursue the strange planned spontaneity good theater can have.
Share this articleShareI felt so safe that one night I turned early — my line was “Don’t look at me like you’ve never heard of brunch” — and flashed the audience, in spite of our hours of careful rehearsal and all my neurotic worries.
Predictably, the audience didn't laugh, but in a weird way, my body did get to be the punchline — not for the people in the seats, but later, for me and everyone else involved in the effort to make that not happen. Art.
The other sex scene was not supposed to be funny at all, and, just as in Shakespeare, there wasn’t any dialogue. The script left the choreography entirely in the hands of the director and cast. Because Alexandra is diabolical, the stage direction said only that “something sexlike happens and it is actually sexy.”
Advertisement
Here are some more things I learned:
1. Female friends will come up to you after the show, delighted and congratulatory, to tell you what they saw. "Nice abs!" one said. "I caught some side boob!" observed another. "I saw you have cellulite, and it made me so happy," said a third. I've decided that is a compliment.
2. Male friends will say, "Nice job," with lots of eye contact.
3. Nudity for the entertainment of a crowd is still a decision with moral implications. I asked a friend if my going topless in this show would make her lose any respect for me. "Well," she said, "is it really, really necessary for the story?" (That means yes.)
4. In interviews, movie stars say that sex scenes are too awkward, with too many other people around, doing their jobs, to be actually hot. Matthew was never distracted or creepy in the slightest, but, yes, it did get hot sometimes. In rehearsal, when we would do something new, I would sometimes think: Oh, he does that in real life, and that's what it looks like when he does it. It is professionally necessary that neither of you ever acknowledge any actual real-life hotness in real time. The professional way to disclose this is to write a magazine article about it months later.
Advertisement
5. Nightly rehearsals are intense and, thus, wildly accelerate the pace of normal relationship development. Matthew and I got weirdly comfortable with each others' bodies. Once, as we were listening to directions, he rested his head on my thigh. I haven't been 15 years married to anyone, but I think that's what it would be like. At one point, during a kiss, he burped in my mouth.
6. The dedicated actor is at work 24-7. The world is one's studio. One might, for example, contrive to experimentally place oneself in an intimate circumstance in real life that approximates an act one will be performing onstage, noting how it happens in real life and using that information. I should have mentioned my handy research partner in the program under "special thanks."
7. The audience — friends and colleagues, family members and even strangers — were generally much cooler about the show's content than I imagined. Except one commenter on the discount ticket Web site Goldstar who grumped "Advertised nudity is a lie." I hope this essay has been especially helpful for him.
Rachel Manteuffel is an editorial aide at The Washington Post.
E-mail us at wpmagazine@washpost.com.
For more articles, as well as features such as Date Lab, Gene Weingarten and more, visit The Washington Post Magazine.
Follow the Magazine on Twitter.
Like us on Facebook.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLmqssSsq7KklWS6orPAs6CnnV%2Bosrl5wKebZqyYmnq1tMSaq56qXZa7bq3Crameq6Nir6K%2BxKxkmqScYq6ju9StZKimo6muqLGMp6ydoaSufHN8kG1mamhfZ4Bwf5Rvm5pxYZZ6da2WbGRqaZVpeqODkZ5knW5gloZzfpicmmpoj6jBsL7YZ5%2BtpZw%3D