This February, Northwestern theater couldn’t get naked enough. After three years of fully-clothed Theatre and Interpretation Center productions, a single weekend offered audiences two dramatic renderings of full-frontal nudity.

But the campus perverts didn’t rejoice at the undraping of four actors – after all, only one of them was a woman. And the loyal and somewhat elderly patrons of TI shows didn’t stay away – “Six Degrees of Separation” and “Equus” both had at least one sold-out show.

So why didn’t nude theater at NU turn more heads?

“It’s nothing people haven’t seen before,” said Alexis Williams, director of “Equus.” When Alan, a horse-worshipping youth on the brink of giving into the passion of sexual intercourse, goes nuts and gouges out the eyes of his horse-gods, it’s not about the nudity. It’s about the message.

“The nudity is about watching this boy lying on the floor calling up to his god and getting no response,” said Williams, a Speech senior. “The point isn’t nakedness.”

“Six Degrees” director and theatre department chair Bud Beyer considered not including nudity in his production precisely because the message might be lost.

“I didn’t know if the audience could maintain concentration on the play (with nudity),” Beyer said.

At least one patron couldn’t. After the opening weekend of “Six Degrees,” a TI subscriber called TI Producing Director Paul Brohan to complain about the few minutes worth of nudity.

“We try to be sensitive to the degree of sophistication and difference of opinion among our patrons,” Brohan said. But the complaint didn’t change the mind of anyone involved in the production.

“You consider it, you think about it. But a single letter is not a rationale for changing a production’s concept,” Beyer said.

Student productions such as Vertigo’s fall 2000 production “Written on the Body” have also included nudity. Posters advertising the show included discreet nude shots of Speech senior Isabelle Libmann, who played a cancer patient whose body shows signs of disease. Though Libmann had a positive experience acting in the play, she thinks nudity is a controversial issue for student productions.

“(Nudity is) a sensitive issue because it’s your body being used for artistic purposes and it’s being objectified,” Libmann said. “It’s difficult to handle (nudity) tactfully.”

Libmann added that nudity sometimes has bigger implications for women than for men. Nude photographs of Libmann were projected on to a screen during the play and some appeared in an nyou article. “It definitely puts a label on you,” she said.

Libmann said that encountering audition form questions like “Would you be willing to appear nude?” is common at NU, but the question is still somewhat difficult to answer.

“When you’re a freshmen or sophomore, a lot of people are just putting down ‘yes’ even if they’re not comfortable with the idea of being nude,” Libmann said.

Even for those who are simply appearing alongside nude characters, answering the nudity question can be a tug-of-war.

“It’s the hardest thing to mark down something that cuts your chances of being in a play, but it’s (also) incredibly difficult to do something that will be a point of tension between you and your parents,” said Speech freshman Pat King, who appeared in “Six Degrees.”

While directors and actors alike say the discomfort nudity causes is not the point of their shows, they argue that some scenes can’t be done without showing some skin.

“I wouldn’t do (“Equus”) with Alan running around in polka-dot boxer shorts,” Williams said.

Speech sophomore Zach Gilford, who played Alan, said that while nudity distracts, it is essential.

“We’re taught that nudity is something private, so when it’s made public it’s a big deal,” Gilford said. “There’s a risk you’re taking but our director decided to take that risk.”

And for some productions, the “big deal” aspect makes nudity useful as a dramatic device. In “Six Degrees,” a pivotal scene opens when the lead character is discovered in bed with a hustler, played by Micah Wylie. Wylie delivers a short monologue in the nude to jar the audience into emotional sensation, the actor said.

“The brutal revealing is a necessary part of the pivotal action,” said Beyer, who decided to include nudity in the show only after Wylie argued it was necessary to the production.

But though Wylie deems the nudity effective because of its shocking nature, he doesn’t think nakedness should be shocking.

“It’s just our bodies; we should be comfortable with them,” said Wylie, a Speech senior.

And when it comes to film, audiences do seem to be comfortable with nudity. In 1995, the film “Showgirls” secured advertising and cinema-space despite its NC-17 rating. But nudity in theater, especially male frontal nudity, seems to be far more objectionable to some audiences.

“It’s a hot potato issue,” Beyer said. Beyer also received complaints that he was underestimating the maturity of the audience by displaying signs outside of Barber Theatre warning that nudity was included in “Six Degrees.”

“People were saying, ‘we’re intelligent enough to accept this, we’re perfectly capable,'” he said.

And though the remainder of this season’s TI’s shows will feature fully clothed actors, Brohan says NU theater isn’t shying away from testing the limits of audiences.

“Theater is meant to provoke,” he said. “I assured (the subscriber who complained) there wouldn’t be any more nudity, but I wouldn’t have a problem if there was.” nyou