There’s a new play by playwright Young Jean Lee called “Untitled Feminist Show,” which features six women who perform the entire play nude. Completely nude. “My jumping-off point for all my shows is like ‘What’s the worst idea I can think of?’ or like, ‘What’s the last show in the world I would want to make?’ And then I force myself to make that show,” Lee said. “Feminism – when I first had the idea for the show – really did seem like a dirty word.” Feminism has, indeed, been described as a “loaded term,” and even Lee admits that “It’s gone through this phase of people not wanting to be identified with it, and seeing it as this ’60s hairy armpit kind of thing.”
Lee grouped together a slew of performers to kick around some ideas, and it turned into month-long, six-hour chat sessions that kept returning to one issue: Young Jean Lee.”One of the big problems for us was the fact that because you are born with a certain type of biological body, it kind of dictates what is OK, how it’s OK for you to be,” Lee said. “The show is basically that,” she said. “What that looks like.” She explained that this idea was mind-bending to her because “while some people claim to have freed themselves from gender expectations, it’s very hard to do.” She retells a story of a male friend who found himself inexplicably enraged when on the subway a man sitting near him pulled out some wool and started knitting. So Lee …
