Broadway play<\/a> about a women\u2019s consciousness-raising group, you can hear supportive cheers of \u201cWhoo!\u201d and \u201cYeah!\u201d \u2014 and sometimes, a round of applause. All before a single word has been uttered. <\/p>\nThere\u2019s a reason for the burst of appreciation \u2014 or solidarity? \u2014 from the crowd. Onstage, six characters are launching one of the bolder scenes on Broadway in this, and perhaps many a season. Each one \u2014 members of a makeshift group sometime in the ’70s \u2014 strips naked, for some 15 minutes of dialogue.<\/p>\n
Wohl says she wondered, back when she was writing, whether \u201cLiberation\u201d might become known as \u201cthat play with the naked scene\u201d \u2014 with the rest collapsing around it. Thankfully, the playwright says, the conversation has been much larger.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been very gratified,\u201d she says of the reaction. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t feel titillating or gratuitous or gimmicky. It feels like a really important piece of the work that the women in the consciousness-raising group are doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The idea came to Wohl as she was researching what such groups \u2014 women of different ages, races and economic backgrounds \u2014 actually did. She learned that exploring their bodies was a major need.<\/p>\n
The play is set mainly in the ’70s, occasionally toggling to the present. For context, it was in 1970 that \u201cOur Bodies, Ourselves,\u201d the groundbreaking work on women\u2019s health and sexuality, was initially self-published, with the first commercially published print edition in 1973.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were growing up in a time where their doctors were male, gynecologists were male, obstetricians were male,\u201d says actor Susannah Flood, who performs the scene every night. \u201cThere was no conversation about female anatomy that was considered polite. And they needed, as a way of taking agency \u2026 to get to know their bodies. So, they got naked.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scene \u2014 in which the women try an exercise they saw in Ms. Magazine \u2014 begins with discomfort. \u201cIt doesn’t seem sanitary,\u201d one says, about sitting in the gym chairs. The \u201cassignment\u201d is for each to describe one thing they like about their body, and one they don\u2019t. The answers range from laugh-out-loud raunchy to poignant. <\/p>\n
The 60-ish Margie, played by Betsy Aidem, hates the unsightly scar from her C-section. \u201cIt feels unfair somehow,\u201d she says. Her children got life, her husband got the family he wanted, \u201cand I ended up this sad husk with this hideous scar.\u201d<\/p>\n
Flood, whose character, Lizzie, is both protagonist and host, finds there\u2019s been a lucky convergence of the play\u2019s subject matter \u2014 people talking to each other \u2014 and the buzz she feels in the audience each night: also, people talking to each other.<\/p>\n
A key reason: Theatergoers must surrender their phones upon arriving, to be secured in special pouches which remain with them but can only be opened by staff. And so, with no emails to send or texts to check, people truly seem to be doing more talking.<\/p>\n
The power of conversation \u2014 and freedom from phones<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real power of conversation \u2014 it\u2019s a theme of the play,\u201d says Flood, whose Lizzie travels in time to better understand choices her mother made. \u201cAnd because we have this scene where we all get naked, people have to surrender their cellphones. Honestly, I think that\u2019s a huge reason the show has garnered the organic response it has.\u201d<\/p>\n
The no-phone rule \u2014 flagged on the show’s website \u2014 is scrupulously followed. One recent evening, a guard spotted a theatergoer scrolling on her phone during intermission; she’d neglected to offer it for lockup. The guard politely but firmly led her from her seat to theater staff in the lobby, to pouch the offending device.<\/p>\n
Mostly, though, people seem grateful to be rid of their phones, says producer Daryl Roth.<\/p>\n
\u201cOver and above the nude scene, it\u2019s a sense of freedom for the audience,\u201d Roth says. \u201cThey can only think about this play right now. And isn\u2019t that what we want? Come in for two and a half hours and give yourself over to what\u2019s on the stage. It’s liberating.\u201d<\/p>\n
New York theatergoer Tracy Bonbrest, who attended \u201cLiberation\u201d with her book club, says she found herself \u201cmuch more attentive, immersed in the experience than if I’d had my phone with me.\u201d She was sitting next to someone she hadn’t met before. \u201cIf I’d had my phone, or she had hers, we probably wouldn’t have engaged in conversation,\u201d says Bonbrest, 62.<\/p>\n
Wohl even addresses the phone issue in her script \u2014 before action gets started. \u201cThey took your phones. Are we OK?,\u201d Lizzie asks the crowd, earning a laugh. <\/p>\n
It’s not the only precaution. Monitors backstage also go black every night \u2014 all to avoid recordings or photos. But the result, Wohl adds, gets at something deeper about live theater.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never going to happen again,\u201d she says of each night\u2019s scene. \u201cYou have to be in the room. And it\u2019s very alive, for that reason.\u201d<\/p>\n
A delicate process, from rehearsals to performance<\/p>\n
The delicate work of pulling the scene off began with the very first rehearsals. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt was its own miniplay,\u201d says Kelsey Rainwater, the production’s intimacy coordinator. She began by meeting actors individually and led intensive rehearsals to choreograph movement. <\/p>\n
\u2019It was a really involved process,\u201d says Rainwater, who’s also an actor and teaches at Yale\u2019s drama school. \u201cI\u2019ve never had a security team that was taking sensitivity training, which is really exceptional. \u201d<\/p>\n
Rainwater calls the scene \u201ca huge ask\u201d for the actors. \u201cIt\u2019s not just being nude onstage,\u201d she says. \u201cThey also have to talk about and draw attention to their bodies.\u201d Rehearsals went step by step. Some actors needed that, while others wanted to rip off the Band-Aid.<\/p>\n
Wohl notes each character approaches the nudity exercise differently \u2014 just like the actors do. \u201cThat\u2019s part of the complicated contradictions of feminism that I was trying to unpack in the play,\u201d she says. One of the more interesting reactions she got was from her own father. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe asked: \u2018Do women really talk to each other about their bodies like this?\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n
Audiences have been respectful, Rainwater says, if sometimes startled. \u201cOn TV and film, there\u2019s a bigger separation,\u201d she says. \u201cBut when you\u2019re breathing the same air, there\u2019s definitely a reaction. Sometimes you feel a little bit like a voyeur. That\u2019s part of the experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
The scary part? Not the nudity<\/p>\n
For the actors, repetition has brought comfort \u2014 and confidence that the scene works. Flood feels it\u2019s harder for the audience than the actors at this point. (The show, which opened at the end of October, is currently running through Feb. 1.)<\/p>\n
The scary part, Flood says she\u2019s come to realize, is not the nudity \u2014 but the emotional vulnerability of the acting itself.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy parents were acting teachers, and they always said acting is controlled humiliation,\u201d she quips. \u201cSo, is it any more humiliating than doing a scene you think is the most important thing on Earth, and having someone fall asleep in the front row?\u201d<\/p>\n
And there\u2019s a bonus: For two hours, nobody’s distracted by a phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople are really having a live experience, with other people, in the moment,\u201d Flood says. \u201cI think people are dying for that. They\u2019re desperate for that, whether they\u2019re aware of it or not.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Brooke Lefferts contributed to this report.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.wsls.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2013 On any given evening as the lights come up on Act 2 of \u201cLiberation,\u201d Bess Wohl’s intergenerational Broadway play about a women\u2019s consciousness-raising group, you can hear supportive cheers of \u201cWhoo!\u201d and \u201cYeah!\u201d \u2014 and sometimes, a round of applause. All before a single word has been uttered. There\u2019s a reason for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2210151,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[426902,426900,426903,21741,21818,415955,426901],"class_list":["post-2210150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bess-wohl","tag-betsy-aidem","tag-daryl-roth","tag-entertainment","tag-lifestyle","tag-susannah-flood","tag-tracy-bonbrest"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/A-daring-scene-on-Broadway-this-season-has-audiences-talking.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2210150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2210152,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2210150\/revisions\/2210152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2210151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2210150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2210150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2210150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}