LEAVES OF GRASS (NUDE)

Leaves of Grass (nude) is a nude choral reading of the poems of Walt Whitman, conceived and directed by Jeremy Bloom.

“Onstage nudity can be a stunt—for better or worse—or a crucial storytelling device... But there seems something appropriately pure about the cell theatre’s production... The director, Jeremy Bloom, has said that the production "celebrates the bare human form as an intersection of nature and industry.

...Perhaps these lines from the poem tipped him off: 'The atmosphere is not a perfume—it has no taste of the distillation—it is odorless; It is for my mouth forever—I am in love with it; I will go to the bank by the wood, and become undisguised and naked; I am mad for it to be in contact with me.”

-The New Yorker

"Performed faithfully and fearlessly."

-Theatremania

"I was left with lasting images from this curious production. The most enduring one accompanied the lines: 'Each has his or her place in the procession. All is a procession.' The birthday-suit parade was led by a willowy woman balancing an upside-down fishbowl on her head. It’s not something you see every day."

-The Daily News

Leaves of Grass (nude) has been performed extensively in New York (at the cell) and in Chicago (Links Hall), featuring hundreds of different performers, and featuring lighting designs by Jeanette Yew, Dan Gallagher and Karen Thompson, sets by Shawn Hollahan, choreography by Nikki Zaleski, costume pieces by Jillian Gryzlak, and original compositions by Maggie Mascal