By Linda Morris
Actors getting their kit off is old news. But a play in which the entire cast is starkers for much of it poses a particular set of challenges for director Declan Greene.
How do you find willing actors (ask, but don’t pressure), to conduct rehearsals in various stages of undress (go slowly), and surmount the shyness of audience members who might not know where to rest their eyes (shrubbery helps)?
The experience could, Greene believes, prove liberating for actors and audiences alike.
Actor Camila Ponte Alvarez will play Evangelina, a Gen Z eco-influencer in a new play, ‘Naturism’, to run as a part of Griffin’s 2025 season. Credit: Kate Geraghty
“You know nudity in theatre doesn’t have to be shocking and confronting, it can be playful, ridiculous and joyful,” he notes. “There is something wonderful about being among the bodies that look like ours, that are not plucked and perfected.”
Naturism is the quirkiest offering in a new season of six plays by Griffin Theatre, Sydney’s theatre of first chances. Five are premieres, and four are new Australian plays by young emerging playwrights like Ang Collins, the winner of a Create NSW incubator grant.
Acclaimed Australian playwright Alana Valentine opens the 2025 season with Nucleus, her first play with Griffin since 2016, one which grew out of meticulous research around the defunct Jervis Bay nuclear facility.
It’s followed by Koreaboo, inspired by playwright Michelle Lim Davidson’s experience as a Korean-born, Australian-raised adoptee looking to reconnect with her biological mother. It’s not giving away the plot to suggest that K-pop becomes a cultural unifier.
But it’s Collins’ comically absurd play, Naturism, set in a nudist colony living off grid on the far South Coast, that comes with the most playful promotional tag line: “No internet. No intruders. No clothes.”
“For me, the difference between nudity for shock value or nudity for titillation and nudity for context and symbolism is the author’s intention,” Greene says.
Lynette Curan, Amanda Muggleton and Kate Sheil on stage in Steaming at the Seymour Centre.Credit: Antonin Cermak
“Naturism is about what happens when humans in natural state are confronted by their vulnerability to a world changing around them.
“As humans, we have developed the technology and advanced industries to pretend we are more powerful than the environment and nature. This play talks about how vulnerable the species is underneath the clothing and the trappings of progress.”
One of the most notable theatre productions to embrace nudity was Nell Dunn’s Steaming, the 1981 hit set in a London bathhouse. Before that was the rock musical Hair, which shocked audiences with its depictions of drug taking and nudity.
Griffin has always worked at this cutting edge of theatre. Hit Australian works such as Suzie Miller’s Prima Facie, Holding the Man, and Speaking in Tongues (which later became the film Lantana) had world premieres on its stage.
Griffin’s 2025 season will be staged in exile at the Seymour Theatre, Wharf Theatre 1 and 2 and the Old Fitzroy Hotel while its Kings Cross home undergoes a $6 million renovation. “We call it our couch-surfing era,” Greene quips.
Collins said the idea for Naturism came to her after being evacuated with her Queensland family during the 2019-20 bushfires, a forerunner to the fierce blazes that turned parts of NSW, Victoria and South Australia to ash.
“Throughout the summer I would try and wash and dry clothes, and it was smokey constantly, and then all the media was saying large parts of Australian might be uninhabitable in 2050. All those terrible thoughts and feeling swelled around in my head, and the question just popped up: ‘What if we did not wear clothes?’
“I’ve tried to write an unexpected and funny take on a big and scary issue. I’m not telling people to wake up, I trust they are groggily awake. The problem is awake and nervous what can we do now? Can I do anything?”
The play makes a distinction between nudism (preference for getting around naked) and naturism (communing nude in nature).
Griffin has hired Chloe Dallimore as an intimacy co-ordinator. Naturism stars newcomer, and Camila Ponte Alvarez as Evangelina, a Gen Z eco-influencer.
Alvarez said she hoped that people might reevaluate their perception of their naked bodies.
“I was drawn to the character’s human contradictions - the hilarious tragedy of young people today seeking authenticity,” she said.
Hair attracted protests, bomb threats and the keen interest of government censors. Naturism’s full-frontal nudity with wobbly bits will likely carry an under-18 age warning but no visits from the morality police. Nudity is permitted in a theatre setting.
With its comedic bent and lack of pretense about perfect body shape, Naturism is the “least sexy play you’ll see”, Collins says.
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