By Cara Sulieman
A THEATRE group is looking for 150 women to dance naked on stage as part of the festival this August.
The produces of Trilogy want to find females of all shapes and sizes to dance to music by the Pixies for the month-long run.
Being held at St Stephen’s Church in the capital’s New Town, the play is part of the Arches residency during the Fringe.
Writer and director, Nic Green, is creating a “celebration of the female body.”
“Exciting”
She said: “It is a high-energy, naked dance ensemble celebrating the differences and diversities of our physicality. It is really wild, fun and exciting.
“The locals in the New Town absolutely need to get involved. What’s great is you’ll have a middle aged, white, mother or three, next to a 16-year-old working class girl from the other side of town.
“And they are just as valid. Everyone’s voice matters in this world we create.”
The performance is likely to raise a few eyebrows in the monied world of the New Town, with residents who are unlikely to strip down in public on a regular basis.
“Ideal vision”
But Jackie Wylie, director of the Arches, insists that it is a liberating experience for the women involved.
She said: “In our society, women don’t get a chance to express how they feel about their own bodies. They are bombarded with an ideal version of what they should be sometimes.
“So when they come together there is an energy that feeds off themselves. The women were quite high off the experience.”
The Church of Scotland has been approached about the play, and they are quite happy with it as long as there is no blasphemy.
Germaine Greer
Nic said: “They were happy with it. They think the body is a beautiful creation, and we’re celebrating it so they were fine with it.”
Spilt into three parts, the naked dancing comes before a drama about Town Bloody Hall – the documentary about a 1971 feminist discussion panel with Germaine Greer and Norman Mailer.
And the show ends with a presentation by Nic Green on her Herstory project – an online forum that encourages women to recognise the female input into society.
Finally, Nic sings Jerusalem naked, and encourages the female audience members to strip down as well.
Anyone who wants to take part in Trilogy should email erin@thearches.co.uk or call 0141 565 1011.
