I am all for it.

Okay, I had to start with a joke. Because seriously, if there was ever a subject that deserves to be taken down a notch or two, this is it.

This is the first of the blog posts I'm writing "on demand," incidentally, in response to the request I made for blog readers to suggest subjects. (That request remains open, if you'd care to suggest something.) I haven't seen anything written on the subject in some time, so my instinct suggested it might be worth considering.

The thing is... is it worth considering? I mean, we've long ago finished having any reasonable arguments about whether it should be legal. (SPOILER ALERT: it should be legal, and it is.) We've also hopefully finally been bored by whatever shock value it might have once provided. (I find Sarah Kane's BLASTED, for example, far more shocking than the simulated oral sex I yawned through during David Grimm's MEASURE FOR PLEASURE.) It hardly seems controversial any more.

The simple fact is that nudity on stage exists. There are always going to be people who buy tickets to shows that feature naked actors just to be prurient under the cover of being cultured, but for most of us, it's old hat.

And yet: I have to admit that on the one occasion in which I found myself called to write nudity and sexuality into a play -- the story actually features a man visiting a dominatrix, a woman masturbating, and another woman meditating in the nude -- I was somewhat queasy about doing it. It's not that I feel uncomfortable with those things in the real world; what bothered me was the fact that I was creating a story that would require actors to actually do (or simulate) those things in public. How dare I!

In writing the relevant stage directions, I have left them somewhat vague. (Some would argue that's bad advice; I believe each stage direction is its own challenge, and no one rule applies to them all.) My hope is that directors working on the play (which is still awaiting a workshop at the moment) will find ways to realize them that match the comfort levels of the actors in question with the demands of the story. No particular level of verisimilitude or exposure is necessary, at least for me.

Is that a middling, mushy approach to my own insecurity? Well, yes, perhaps, it is. Ultimately, I am going to need to decide whether the nudity and sexuality are necessary for the story or not; I might be wrong, but I need to have a decision. I need to have conviction; if I don't, I don't deserve to ask anything of anyone. And that's as true of every line I write, really, as it is of this.