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A revealing reaction happens whenever I see erotic intimacy on the stage (and in the movies as well): I feel, at the same, bored and embarrassed. I simply want to get past it to the next phase of the story. However, I greatly enjoy the anticipation of intimacy – the leaning in for the kiss, the hovering hand.
In other words, I prefer the arousal to the delivery.
I think that's because good theatre is built on arousal: rising arc, raised stakes, and so on. And when the climax of the play happens (interesting choice of words), it signals an ending, a dying off, a signal that our revels are now almost ended.
Who would not prefer arousal to farewell, anticipation of sweetness to the inevitable disappointment once sweetness is delivered?
Naked bodies on stage distract me. I keep worrying about faux pas of all sorts – an uncalled-for erection, physical damage from set pieces. And actors never seem entirely comfortable in their nakedness up there, which then radiates into the audience, further distracting us from being in the dream of the play.
Half-naked bodies, unaware of themselves – now, that works for me. Why? Because something is left to my imagination. The peek-a-boo keeps me interested because I don't have full information. A naked body is a complete report. A half-naked body leaves out half the words, which doubles the imagination.
Naked bodies on stage, or simulated sexual acts – and the audience seated in the dark, with voyeuristic watching as their only means of participation. What distinguishes a scripted rehearsed play with these elements from the shops that Rudy G. wanted to shut down under his regime in New York City? Well?
One problem with sex on stage is that, like most simulated experiences, it can never be as interesting as the real thing. The audience is always conscious of the sex's "simulatedness," that we're being asked to take the fake as the real, and ultimately that is not very satisfying – it doesn't reach very deeply into us.
This is because sex on stage becomes commodified when it becomes packaged in a way to deliver a profit to the art's producers, whether that profit is monetary or aesthetic. Commodification is not restricted just to objects being turned into cash value for the marketplace – it happens any time creators, be they artists or manufacturers, take something precious to our human experience and retrofit it for their own gain. The dividing line between exploitation and art may be the degree to which the art's producers have a true custodial feel for what they've appropriated, but the process is still the same for marketeers and artistic directors: take it, use it, profit by it.
Does this mean, though, that there can never be sex on stage that is real, authentic, honest, "artistic"? Come on – would you really want to be in the presence of that somewhere not in the privacy of your own home, where the possibility of participation could go beyond simply viewing? Who wants to just watch? Better to leave sex off the stage – yes? no?
Like religious belief, sex is best kept private. And that goes for the stage as well. In fact, perhaps the theatre should be a "sex-free" zone, where we can escape the relentless commercial blitz of T&A&C (C for "cock" – must not forget the gentlemen). Dare I say it – a place to experience our more refined feelings? How quaint! How Victorian! How refreshing!
Eros and Thanatos are forever linked – this link is what makes life sweet/bitter. Eros without Thanatos is pornography, or at least titillation, done with all that "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" that never delivers the goods, done to get you hot and bothered and keep you in an unfinished state. Thanatos without Eros is despair – a true response to our human condition but also unbearable. But Americans have banished death from their stage art and so have left themselves only with sex as their surrogate for the erotic/melancholic dialectic essential to understanding human life. Which is why sex on the American stage is often some combination of boring and self-embarrassed. How can it not be like this, since it is missing half its essential self?
Sex is subversive, a free relationship that undermines community and all fixed and hierarchical social relations. Sex has politics, in other words. But since Americans have pretty much banished any sort of liberatory politics from their stages, we get left with a whiff of naughtiness, which only invites titters, not manifestoes. Which is not surprising, since American's immature understanding of sex matches their immature practice of politics and their resolute stupidity about power.
In the end, maybe the best way to deal with sex on stage is by way of spoof or farce. Sex farces are always fun because we can be naughty without being serious, the same way that the movie The Full Monty is funny and touching because we see buttocks rather than genitals. This way we can get the sex in without too much distraction and then move on to more interesting things. Which is what this essay should do.
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