Staging the Phallus: Naked Boys Singing!

Abstract

The article discusses Naked Boys Singing!, a musical featuring full-frontal male nudity, and asks how it can be positioned in debates on taboos and censorship in the theatre. It also investigates if the display of the nude male body subverts the usual patriarchal structure of the theatrical gaze, which is most obvious in the traditional striptease. The show’s homoeroticism creates an ambivalent attitude towards the exposed and constantly discussed penises. While highlighting their appeal as titillation and taboo, the article also confirms that the phallus (the symbolic power structure of which the penis is only ever a deficient representation) as the guiding principle of the ideology behind the theatre and shows such as Naked Boys Singing! remains firmly in place, both literally and metaphorically. Yet this double presence of real body parts and a symbolic power structure also leads to an interesting ‘spectral’ quality of the bodies on stage. What the spectators experience are real bodies, indeed specially trained, selected, and therefore ideal bodies, but also an oscillation behind these present bodies and the presence of their underlying power structure, namely, phallocentrism.