Showgirl

Julien R. Fielding

"It begins with a strip tease that doesn’t go very well," said Maria Glanz, the creator and performer of See Me Naked, a one-woman show that will come to the Blue Barn Theatre July 12 and 13. "It then becomes a monologue and dialogue about nakedness and nudity. The title is deliberately titillating."

Since premiering her show last March, Glanz has taken Naked to fringe festivals from Seattle to Montreal, and she’s garnered plenty of praise. The Edmonton Journal gave her performance five stars, the Seattle Times called her, "brilliant … A cross between Julia Sweeney and a Chatty Cathy doll, Glanz is at once fragile and powerful — kind of like the naked human body itself," and the Seattle Post Intelligencer called her "likable, entertaining and sometimes even laugh-out-loud funny."

Naked has won its share of awards, too, picking up the "Artistic Pick of the 2001 Seattle Fringe Festival" and "Best of Fest Holdover at the 2001 Edmonton Fringe," which has the distinction of being the largest fringe fest in North America.

Glanz's Blue Barn appearance will mark her Midwest debut.

"I’m really excited about coming to Omaha," she said. "This is the first [venue] that’s not part of a festival."

A part of the Blue Barn’s sporadic ’Round Midnight series, Naked will begin at 11 p.m. both nights, following the theater's current production of Five Women Wearing the Same Dress.

Kevin Lawler, artistic director of the Blue Barn, found out about the show from Elizabeth Klob, a member of Open Circle Theater in Seattle and Lawler’s former company member at Purchase College State University of New York.

"She helped Maria put the show together," Lawler said. "I was talking to [Elizabeth] about doing a piece with them and she mentioned that [Maria] was doing this at festivals." When Lawler found out Glanz had some time off between appearances, he invited her to the downtown venue. "It’s a great show," he said. "It’s very funny, endearing, very courageous and cool. It’s not at all what you would expect. It’s sort of exciting to get her to come from Seattle. We don’t always get these types of shows."

"It’s a cross between theater and stand-up comedy," Glanz said. "There are also elements of performance art but it’s very accessible."

Because each performance is interactive, no two turn out the same. "Some audiences are lively," Glanz said. "Sometimes they are very warm and some people are moved almost to the point of crying. Montreal surprised me. They took it very seriously and were very intense. Sometimes people are irritated and don’t like it."

Other times, the actress said she encounters a very talkative audience and they get into conversation.

Naked came out of Glanz’s own experiences and questions about nudity.

A life-long theater veteran, educator and writer, Glanz was curious why in the age of the Internet and accessible pornography, people still were flocking to shows that contained nude scenes. "I was then on tour performing Pu’uhonua [Place of Refuge] and I thought if I was naked in this I’d be making a fortune," she said. "In films you see a lot more naked women than men. But I would love to see more [naked] men."

Having previously been onstage wearing nothing more than a smile, "I loved it," she said, and wanted to recapture that feeling.

However, she isn’t alone in her exhibitionism. At one point in her Naked performance, the auburn-haired actress asks the audience to undress, and, she said, she’s had some revealing results. "One guy went down to his briefs," she said. "Others won’t even undo a button."

Glanz said that the most frequent comment she gets about her show is how naïve and innocent a soul her character is.

In September Glanz will revisit themes of nudity for her next production, which she refers to as "an erotic cabaret about food and sex." For more information about Glanz and her work, go to http://www.mariaglanz.com.

Showgirl was originally published in The Reader on 15 July, 2002. © 2002 Reader Publishing Inc.