Naked and spectacular

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2015-10-09

A Lucid Failure

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.