by Kirby Lindsay, posted 8 February 2012
Three special performances will take place at West Of Lenin, on February 14th, 17th & 18th, as Maria Glanz brings her award-winning, comic and interactive show See Me Naked to the Center of the Universe.
The interactive comedy that starts with a failure to striptease goes on to explore the nature of nudity – both for the performer and the audience. Glanz wrote this play over ten years ago, performing it first with the help of director Elizabeth Klob for the 2001 Seattle Fringe Festival. Since then, Glanz and Klob have staged this show to great acclaim at play festivals all over the U.S. and Canada, and may, with the help of producer Bill Mann (Defending the Caveman,) transform it into a touring show that could start here in Fremont.
West Of Lenin, And Broadway, In Fremont
“I’m so excited to be at West of Lenin,” Glanz proclaimed. “I love the space. I think it’s beautiful.” The scripted setting for See Me Naked is a burlesque hall, an easy transformation for Fremont’s new black box theatre. “Fremont is going to be awesome,” Glanz mused.
“I think the model that A.J. [Epstein] is doing,” with West of Lenin, “of not producing but presenting [works by others,] is great for us,” Glanz said. As a theater without a permanent company – a very professionally set-up rental space – West of Lenin works well for touring shows. Also, “people have been missing theater in Fremont since the Empty Space closed,” Glanz observed. For audiences hungry for live theater, and a more casual atmosphere, Glanz said, “it may be easier to go to Fremont to see a show than Downtown [Seattle.]”
‘A Whole New Ride’
Coincidentally, See Me Naked shares a similar staging trajectory to another work presented last fall at West Of Lenin – Kevin Joyce’s disturbing and dark ‘A Pale & Lovely Place.’ Both pieces began at the Fringe Festival as conversational pieces, exploring personal themes – and both have been recently revisited by their creators.
“This time it’s almost like a whole new ride,” Glanz observed of the 2012 staging of See Me Naked. The show starts as a comic monologue, but slowly slips into a dialogue with the audience about their own experiences, and what they bring to shows that contain nudity. That alone often makes each performance unique, but since 2001 when Glanz and Klob first staged See Me Naked, our culture has shifted – witness the burgeoning business of neo-burlesque here in Fremont – in its attitudes toward nudity.
Additionally, the show addresses, “my whole experience,” Glanz explained. As they began to prepare the show in 2010 for performances at Open Space on Vashon Island, director Klob asked Glanz if she wanted to reprise her role, or cast a younger actress. The question helped Glanz see the subject – and her age – in a new light. “Those feelings we have about our bodies – about being naked and being seen,” Glanz observed, “are as significant at 16, 36, and 56.”
One, Among Many
Glanz also noted that many mislabel See Me… as a ‘one-person show’, like ‘Pale & Lovely…’. She more accurately described the cast as “three person plus.” While she is definitely the focus of the performance, her abbreviated striptease also involves a drummer and a tech person, who spend the hour-long show trying to get the performance back on script.
As for the ‘plus,’ Glanz refers to the audience. Throughout her career, Glanz admitted, “solo seems to be where I end up.” She has found herself attracted to such works, she explained, due to her fascination with “that direct interaction with the audience.” In See Me Naked she can’t rely on anyone else to connect with the audience, or give less of a performance and hope others pick up the slack.
However, There May Be Some Making It Up As We Go Along…
One of the many ways the introspective, and severely scripted Pale & Lovely… stands a spectrum apart from the extroverted, and comic See Me… is in the willingness of Glanz to improvise. “I’ve always loved it,” Glanz said of improvisation, “it’s terrifying, but just so exciting. When I see something on stage that I love, it’s always because it feels like it’s happening at that moment for the first time.”
Each time for See Me Naked is like the first time. Glanz interacts so much with audience members, in fact, that she allows their reactions to decide each night how the show will end. “I’d done improvisation and I’d done scripted,” when she wrote this work, Glanz explained, and she enjoys aspects of both types. She fondly recalled her work in a production, by Sound Theatre Company, of The Belle of Amherst (a one-woman show) staged here in Fremont in 2010. For Glanz, the important thing is to keep it fresh.
She likes to aim for an experience she had early in her acting career. During the 60th performance of a scripted show, she recalled, an actor sat on a box – as he had every other night so far – only this time the box broke out from under him and forced the entire cast to go on as though it were part of the show. “That’s what I want to have,” Glanz explained of her every performance, “to have the box break.”
While her boxes in See Me Naked may remain metaphorical, when the ‘strip tease’ winds up being neither a tease and, perhaps, not even a strip, breaks do occur. To find out how the whole thing comes out, in the end, stop by West of Lenin for this limited glimpse of Glanz, seeing nudity in a new light. Purchase tickets, soon, to See Me Naked, for only $20, through Brown Paper Tickets today.
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©2012 Kirby Lindsay. This column is protected by intellectual property laws, including U.S. copyright laws. Reproduction, adaptation or distribution without permission is prohibited.