PARTISAN REVIEW
493
Che,
on the other hand, bored me so much that I finally walked
out (discreetly waiting until climax had been reached on stage) - and
I saw the original version, before a bust by the D.A.'s office led
to
the
addition of "see-through vinyl costumes." These may have proved a
blessing in disguise, for unlike
Geese
and
Oh! Calcutta!,
the bods in
Che
were decidedly under par, and for diversion the audience had
actually to listen to the excruciatingly tedious script, a series of one-line
aphorisms that swiftly benumbed mind and senses ("Laughter indicts
your cool"; "Mfection is despair"; etc., etc.).
Che
gave pornography a
bad name, for although - to rate it according to the legal definition–
it was "unredeemed by artistic merit," it was also, alas, unredeemed by
any ability to "prurient arousal."
Oh! Calcutta!
achieved a notoriety exceeding both
Geese
and
Che.
Two comments seem worth making. First, despite a list of contributors
that included Samuel Beckett, Jules Feiffer, John Lennon, Sam Shep–
ard and Tennessee Williams, the production was homogenized to such
a consistent level of blandness as to make the speculation on which
contributor wrote what scene of no interest. Second,
Oh! Calcutta!
did
confirm the distinction between nakedness and nudity originally made
by Sir Kenneth Clark: "to be naked," he wrote, "is to be deprived
of our clothes, and the word implies some of the embarrassment most of
us feel for that condition. The word nude, on the other hand, carries
in educated usage, no uncomfortable overtone. The vague image it
projects into the mind
is
not of a huddled and defenseless body, but of
a balanced, prosperous and confident body."
Oh! Calcutta!
was the
only skin show this season to approach Nudity - unself-consciousness
about being without clothes. But that is exactly what defeated its stated
purpose of erotic arousal. In our culture, the unclad body becomes an
erotic object only when it can be associated with the embarrassment
most of us feel when taking off our clothes before making love. Nudity
- the self-confident luxuriating in our bodies - is not a situation
familiar to most of us, not an occasion we associate with sex - and
therefore not an occasion, when represented on a stage, likely to arouse
our lust.
If
the Authorities, therefore, were fearful of theater which
incited prurient interest, as they claimed, they made a shrewd distinction
in raiding
Che
while allowing
Oh! Calcutta!
to proceed unmolested
(though they failed to notice, or at least did not share my opinion,
that the naked bodies revealed in
ehe,
though decidedly embarrassed,
were also decidedly unattractive).
Grotowski's Polish Lab Theater, the Performance Group, The Liv–
ing Theater, The Open Theater and Peter Brook's projects
with
the
