The Nudity Clause

They wanted me to do a nude scene. The play was Steaming — about a group of women protesting the imminent closure of their local Turkish bath — and naturally, there were a lot of scenes where the actors — well, actresses, in this case — were dressed, undressing, walking around in bath towels, completely nude, and everything in between.

It wasn’t about the nudity, the director insisted. She said it was about female empowerment and bonding, and I was big on that.

Besides, in repertory theatre, the dressing rooms backstage were cramped and crowded, and if you had to get changed in a hurry between scenes, you soon learned not to worry too much about who was around. Everyone had a job to do as part of the team, and the after-parties were legendary.

So nudity — and it was only topless for my part in the play — wasn’t a big deal for me. For some of the older women, who weren’t as perky as they might once have been, I thought it took far more braves to get completely undressed, revealing themselves in sagging, stretch-marked splendour.

If they had no qualms, how could I complain? I was only going to be topless, and I had nothing to be ashamed or hesitant about in that regard.

“But what about the audience?” someone asked. “Won’t they be taking shots on their cameras, making movies, turning the whole thing into a porno shoot?”

“No worries,” said Burt, the stage manager. “We put up a notice saying no cameras, we eject anyone we see using one, and we confiscate the equipment. It works well. Besides, we control the lighting, there’ll be plenty of carbon dioxide vapour to simulate steam, and the audience doesn’t get too much of a chance to see your bits, let alone take photographs.”

So I agreed, signed up, and began learning my lines and getting together for rehearsals.

We’d sit around in somebody’s living room — fully dressed, of course — reading through the scripts and occasionally getting up to practice an interaction or movement. It was all pretty low-key, to be honest. A very “talky” play, and you had to listen to the dialogue to follow the action.

My part was minor. I walked on, took my top and my bra off, delivered a couple of lines, and then went behind a low screen where I emerged with a towel wrapped around my lower body, sat down on a bench and said very little for the rest of the play.

We did the first dress rehearsal, where we kept all of our clothes on. Burt and his helpers fiddled with the lights and the fog machines, and it was all suitably gloomy and misty.

There was a guy with a camera taking shots.”Publicity stills,” said the director. “Don’t look at him. He’s getting the best angles for the lighting.”

Well, there was enough fog around that I wasn’t sure that the photographs would show anything more than vague outlines. “We need a foghorn,” I suggested, “so we don’t bump into each other.”

“That’s what dress rehearsals are for,” snapped the director. “You should have all of your movements and lines down by now. Right. We’ll run through it again, this time with all the costumes.”

Or lack of them, I thought to myself, a little nervously.

Undress rehearsal

There wasn’t much to my costume. Apart from a skirt and top which I was to discard almost immediately, I had a towel and a flesh-coloured bikini bottom, just in case I dropped the towel.

I listened to the action from backstage, waited for my cue, and sauntered on. The lights seemed a little brighter than before, but perhaps that was just my eyes, adjusted to the dark of the wings. There was certainly enough concealing fog jetting out of the machine.

I moved to centre stage, delivered my lines as I unbuttoned my top, and I couldn’t help but notice that the mist was dissipating rapidly, just a wisp here and there as my bra came off and I stood for a moment before moving to the rear of the set, emerging a few moments later with a towel wrapped around me.

It all went fine, but I was a little annoyed. That bloody photographer had been in the front row, his camera aimed at my boobs, and there had been just enough steam vapour to give some atmosphere, rather than the thick clouds of the first run through.

I button-holed Burt afterwards. “Hey, what happened to all the fog I was supposed to get for my scene?”

“Ah, right, yeah,” he explained. “Thing was, I had my finger over the nozzle.”

Britni