Betsy Aidem, Adina Verson, Irene Sofia Lucio, Audrey Corsa and Suzanne Flood rehearse the opening scene of Act II.
Photo: Sarah Messinger for New York Magazine
These days there may be very little reason for hope. In such a difficult period of spirit, it is important to hear the opinions of such characters as those in Liberation, extraordinary play Bess good moving to Broadway at the end of October. Set in the 1970s at the meetings of a feminist consciousness-raising group, and also in the present day, as the narrator (Suzanne Flood) tells the story of the group founded by her mother, the show acts as an invigorating tonic, an antidote to the darkness. Featuring not celebrities but a cast of superb New York theater regulars (the cast won a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble), it engages in both exquisite character studies and passionate political conversations – a thrilling dose of which occurs early in the second act during a key 15-minute scene in which the six actors are completely naked.
Like everyone else Liberation the scene is funny, contemplative and paper-sharp, a theatrical coup for reasons beyond her stripping. The show's website reveals nudity and asks audience members to put their phones in their cases during the performance, but even so, actors tell me they've experienced a range of reactions. “I remember this middle-aged woman was So shocked,” says Audrey Corsa. “Guys,” says her co-star Irene Sofia Lucio, raising an expert eyebrow, “we heard this word once boobs!” Everyone is moaning. But, Flood adds, “most people are caught up in the magic of what's happening in that scene.” “Yes,” say several voices, one of them belongs to Betsy Aidem. Not I want someone to break the spell.”
What kind of work goes into creating such a bold, long-lasting, literally exposed episode? To find out more, I'm sitting in rehearsal, and I'm not alone. Mom helped me pull the stroller out of the subway – my 4-month-old daughter was currently blissfully unconscious in it.
Wohl had been wanting to write a play about the feminist movement of the 1970s for what she called “an astonishingly long time, maybe 15 years.” Her mother, Lisa Cronin Wohl, worked at RS. magazine, and Wohl recalls going to the office with her and playing in a “common game.” Later she went to marches with her mother and her mother's friends. These women lived in her head for years, but it wasn't until she realized she was trying to write more than just a “period play” that the project took off. “For a while, I didn’t even know I was writing a play about a mother and daughter,” Wohl says. “It became a quest to understand my mother.”
Wohl's ambition as a playwright is to “put something on stage that I haven't seen before.” For her, the image of several women “talking about their bodies and being naked but not sexualized” – not “arousing or gratuitous” but compassionate, curious and tough – “seemed a little radical.” It's also historically accurate: Some CR feminist groups did hold meetings without nudity, and Wohl, who interviewed about a dozen members of such groups while preparing for the play, quickly discovered how significant this practice was. “Women talked about it a lot and were very proud of it,” she says. “It felt like a way to represent what they actually did—their bravery.”
Photo: Sarah Messinger for New York Magazine
Suzanne Flood (above and above) at rehearsal.
Photo: Sarah Messinger for New York Magazine
The show was directed by Whitney White (who was nominated for a Tony Award for African hair braiding Jadji, her Broadway debut) was aware that her nude scene would require considerable forethought. “I knew we'd have to dig deep and get used to it and do the right thing,” she says, before adding wryly: “And full disclosure: I was an actress who had terrible experiences with being naked on stage multiple times. So I often let it drive me. Like: Can you just do better than what you had?When Roundabout Theater Company began rehearsals for its original Off Broadway play earlier this year, White and her team filled the room with research material. She turned to Adam Curtis documentaries and Angela Davis scripts, as well as news clips from the era. “What the average person digests American?” White asks. “You can look at high art and cinema all you want, but what is everyday life? What was on ABC at the time?”
This sensitive, nuanced world-building allowed the actors, in White's words, to “create real women who could be different” from themselves. “We were really trying to create Venn diagrams of what is the same between the character of Susie and the actor playing her, and what is radically different? From gender presentation to all sorts of different things. It made the intimacy work feel depressurized.”
A caring—not to mention playful and deeply feminist—spirit permeates Liberationrehearsal room. When the actors get to work on a big scene, you can feel it. They stretch, shake their limbs and begin to recite dialogue, while White asks questions and reminds from the sidelines. Gradually they move into more full-fledged stage work. “This insane I don’t think my mother ever did,” says Flood as narrator, breaking the stage’s fourth wall to address the audience.I I’ve never even seen her naked.”
However, now no one is undressed. That's not the point of the rehearsal, and according to the show's crew, that was very rarely the case. “We work like hell on the lyrics, over and over again, because that's what really matters,” White says. “I feel like the main purpose of this scene is to make the audience remember that there is so much more going on, that the nudity is just a tiny part.” I see this rigor on her feet when White leans forward at certain moments while the actors work: “Clean up,” she says. “Stay alive…Project it less, mean more.”
Heroes Volya perform the exercise recommended RS. “The idea,” says Corsa's Dora, who presented the magazine, “is that we all walk around saying one thing we love and one thing we hate about our bodies.” Christolyn Lloyd's Celeste, an uncompromising intellectual and the only black woman in the group, is sceptical: “Honestly, I don't think we should focus on looks at all.” But Isidora Lucio, the irresistibly uninhibited Sicilian director, is full of enthusiasm. “I Love …my boobs,” she says without apology (“More Hamlet!” – White shouts, and Lucio repeats this phrase with all seriousness: “To be or not to be.” It kills.) Aidem's Margie, the oldest of the group and in her late sixties, cuts deep when she admits she hates her C-section scar, while Adina Verson's Susie is a motorcyclist who writes brilliant punk manifestos on back of napkins—gets big laughs every time she delivers the character's pithy self-assessment: “Ass, okay; boobs, ugh.
To achieve the on-stage clothing-removal moment during the original production, the actors worked with intimate film director Kelsey Rainwater. According to Corsa, Rainwater acted “as a conduit to take us all to a place where we felt comfortable, knowing that we would all be at different comfort levels.”
“She also set rules and boundaries,” Lloyd says. “We don't talk about our bodies. You don't say anything you like or don't like.” “My character’s relationship with his body and my relationship with my body are completely different,” Lucio says. “Finding a way to overcome that and make Isidora’s body almost a costume was very, very rewarding.” She pauses, then grins slyly: “Some of us also wear merkins on the show, which for me added another layer.” For me it's a suit of flesh.“There are shouts and hoots as others agree or protest.”I I didn't need a merkin,” says Lloyd, standing up straight with the bluntness of Miss Jean Brodie as her fellow actors giggle. “I’m perfectly capable of growing my own.”
Audrey Corsa (left) at rehearsal.
Photo: Sarah Messinger for New York Magazine
Once the scene was thoroughly rehearsed, the actors went from performing it fully clothed to attempting to perform it in underwear or camisoles provided by the show's designers. The team hung curtains around the room and dimmed the lights, and, according to Eidem, “they had someone male come out of the room the first time we did it in their underwear.” Then, Verson says, “a few times later we were like, 'Are we ready to do this topless?'” Verson eventually started to get a little irritated by the pace: “It was like, 'Are we ready to do this topless?' Let's just fucking do it! But Lloyd counters: “Being the other one in the band and having the only chocolate nipples on stage, I needed slowness.”
However, the actors are passionately united when it comes to the importance of a scene. “Perhaps we're giving viewers an opportunity to overcome their discomfort with nudity, period, but especially with nudity of women,” says Flood. “And the fact that we're on Broadway now suggests that this kind of discussion is commercially viable.” Verson nods excitedly, “I wish I could see normal bodies on stage when I was a teenager. Like, look at all the different labia! Seriously, look at all the different pubes! They're all normal.”
There is another world in which this cast takes the Broadway stage, regardless of dress code, under the leadership of America's first female president—another timeline in which Liberationit might seem, Wohl ruefully, “a celebratory spectacle about how far we’ve come.” Instead, the show became a vessel for both deep pain and lasting, unkillable hope. “Back in March, when we did this,” recalls Wohl, “people really came to the theater with the need to be together at this moment and collectively understand what was happening. This was also a search for the main character: How did this happen? How did we get here? What went wrong? She sighs: “This is funny. When we went back to rehearsals this time, I didn't know how it would feel. Will the questions be just as urgent? Will they feel different? Are we even more tired now? Have we become even angrier? Where are we as a society? And I actually feel that the questions are still the same. They've just gone deeper in a way and there's a rawness to them. I think we're both more tired and at the same time it seems more urgent. All this turned out to be true.”
When my mother and I return home, I look at my daughter’s face. She's sleeping again. “You know,” my mom says, “in college, my friend Beth was outraged that only men had saunas in the gym locker rooms. So one day we all just took our clothes off and walked through the men's locker room in towels to clear out the sauna. We were naked, and all these big naked football players kept opening the door and…!” She makes a scared face and laughs. I laugh too and am delighted too. I never knew this until now.
