I must admit it, I’ve been feeling naked in the last period. Overexposure to the emotions, new fears, loneliness, joy for the little things, intimacy make me feel bare and unprotected as never before, even if I’m safe in my house. In those silent days spent apart, within our little bubble, there’s a perception of the emotional spectrum even more deep than usual, or maybe deepened by what is not usual.
And this is the reason why the vision of N A K E D, a compelling incorporation of intimacy, humour, movements, and breathings, touched me so profoundly as a comfortable embrace.
To be honest, I was expecting a totally different experience. After an entire summer spent watching something online, alone with my G&T, I was finally over excited to be again in a theatre, with true people, and ready to share the emotions of the show with them. And then, the news, the upcoming lockdown pushing us in our private cocoon, once again. I didn’t know what to expect. I knew it was a show meant to be live, not streamed, and that is what I wanted to be. I was truly disappointed by a situation that, again, forced me to be on my couch, alone with a drink and my boyfriend in front of me, watching some games on his laptop. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
But, again, theatre succeeded in surprising me. I had a totally different and new experience. I was online with people from all over the world, ready and willing to chat and comment on the experience together, maybe maybe to survive the disappointment of being denied the experience we were all expecting.
As soon as Paige-Marie Baker-Carroll and Luke Vincent appeared in their cocoon and started guiding us through the bulk of the show, in a climax of emotions, the comments from the audience started appearing in the left bar. Appreciation, encouragement, affection. I had the impression that I wasn’t reading, but literally hearing all of them, as if we were sharing the same space.
And that’s it. The performance of Baker-Carroll and Vincent sounded, to me, a perfect metaphor of my life in these days: move, share, breathe, feel naked together. In a sort of “ping pong” of emotions, joy and tears, our emotions are lived not with words but with our silent bodies. And that’s what I felt during the show, a comfy, warm embrace both physical and emotional.
I was participating in something completely new, and it was sad, but it was beautiful and relieving at the same time. I realised that these comments were a common applause, a shared breathing released while something was happening in front of us: the power of sharing. And this is something that the lockdown, or our loneliness can’t steal from us.
We were all N A K E D.
Naked is still available to watch on demand until 20th December here