Marilyn Thipthorpe

To celebrate Shakespeare’s birthday and to promote normalisation of nudity, an all-women group are performing his final play naked in Central Park
his is an all-woman, fully nude, abridged adaptation of William Shakespeare’s final play The Tempest, performed in part to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Bard’s death. Produced by the Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society, this is the first of two consecutive performances.
The show’s other big aim, they say, is to promote the normalisation of the naked female body. For six years, the group has met to read books and have picnics while exercising the right to enjoy the outdoors topless (which the law in New York allows), in an effort to encourage body freedom. This is their first production of a play.
“I said: why don’t we just do Shakespeare, and do The Tempest, and do it naked?” says Charles Ardai, the play’s producer, after the performance. “And the reactions from the audience was wonderful – the initial discomfort, and then getting used to it and then just seeing human beings.”