The questions gradually became more probing. And as promised, she led off with a softball: “Raise your hand if you’ve been naked. And fun,” Glanz reassured the audience, genuinely breaking the fourth wall for the first time. It is a delightfully schizophrenic stream-of-consciousness ramble through the evolution of Glanz’s body image from childhood to the present day, coupled with an interactive dialogue with the audience about their private experiences with their bare skin. “See Me Naked” is more than a comic one-woman show and darling of the fringe theater circuit. Then the house lights came up and the questions begin. Because it might make it easier,” she said. “What are you doing?” her drummer demanded at last.
Stalling, she gabbled about the burlesque class she took to prepare for the show, her stripper cousin, and the ritual uses of nudity in the ancient world. Still, she’s on stage to strip, and strip she will.
When she returned, she was fully dressed in a conservative buttoned-up blue cardigan and black slacks, her va-va-voom having completely vanished. But when it came time to divest herself of her saucy black bustier, she panicked, fixed the audience with a wide-eyed deer-in-the-spotlight stare and fled. She made it through the removal of her elbow-length velvet gloves, the requisite alluring glances at the audience, and the tossing of her hair while gyrating her hips. These images, ranging from oil paintings to tacky pin-ups from the 1940s, did not depict naked women as Glanz defines the term.īacked by a drummer (Rob Carnell) banging out a vintage burlesque beat, Glanz led off with a painfully earnest striptease taken straight out of Gypsy Rose Lee’s dustiest playbook. On a screen made of draped fabric, a slideshow of nude women scrolled languidly to the accompaniment of old-time bump and grind music. As Glanz struggles throughout the hour-long piece to get out of her clothing, she is in truth wrestling with the dichotomy of her fear of nakedness and her desire for nudity. Nudity, on the other hand, is without discomfort a condition of utter confidence. The difference between being naked and being nude lies at the crux of “See Me Naked,” an award-winning monologue by Seattle actor Maria Glanz that has been remounted at West of Lenin this month, more than a decade after its debut.īeing naked means being embarrassed, deprived of covering, and ultimately ashamed.
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