This is the text of a performance I gave at the
2015 Melbourne Fringe Festival. I was
intending to produce a play called Lucid, but
I failed and instead performed this monologue. You can also listen to an audio recording of the final performance.
[I enter in smart-casual attire.]
~
Today I stand
before you weak. But I am not ashamed. I have been strong before, I
remember what it feels like. I know how to get back there. But
right now I am weak, clothed, civilised. I have no gifts, no riches, no
joy or inspiration to offer you at this moment.
I offer you only a taste of my despair and desolation; my story.
You came here
tonight to see something I was unable to deliver. But perhaps my failure
is as worthy of your attention as my success may have been. You may have
come for entertainment; and if so, I apologise. You may have come for
nudity and scandalous displays of humanity, and in this I will do my best.
I have come
here tonight to stand before you fully naked, because I think the human body is
a work of intense beauty, and that gentleness, vulnerability and honesty are
the most powerful ways we can interact.
I wrote an
intimate and challenging play, intending to assemble a team to rehearse my
convoluted play until we could perfectly replicate it on cue, but I
failed. I wanted to present vulnerability and intense presence in an
entirely contrived and artificial form; and I know, it sometimes works, I have
seen some great theatre. But instead, all I can offer you is the real
thing.
I'm sorry, I'm
just a person. I'm not a character, I'm not a metaphor. I am an
immense and ancient entity in a delicate physical body. I can dress for
the occasion but nothing prepares me for the world like being totally naked.
