Topeka — Actors and actresses will bare it all next month at a city-owned theater when a nudist colony stages a series of plays it commissioned to promote a clothing-free lifestyle.
The Lake Edun Foundation Inc. (Edun is nude spelled backward) promoted the plays in its August newsletter under the headline, "No Sex, No Violence ... Only Nudity."
The plays are scheduled to be performed Sept. 24 to Oct. 1 at the Topeka Performing Arts Center's Hussey Playhouse.
The foundation newsletter said the contest-winning scripts examine "social expectations, intimacy and just downright shock, all because of the human body."
Playwrights who submitted scripts weren't required to include on-stage nudity. But the foundation, which uses the term "naturist" rather than nudist, encouraged playwrights to consider on-stage nudity if it advances their story line. The competition offered a $500 prize for first place, $200 for second and $100 for third.
Carl St. Clair, interim director of the performing arts center, said that once the center rented the theater to the foundation, it has no control over the content of its performance.
"The courts have long since held that we cannot infringe the right of that kind of activity," said St. Clair, who works for Compass Facility Management, the Ames, Iowa-based firm hired in 2002 to manage the center.
He said it would amount to prior restraint of what might or might not be expression protected by the First Amendment.
"Unfortunately, in some case we have to do things that aren't understood by the majority of our patrons," St. Clair said.
Auditions for the plays start Saturday, with callbacks on Sunday. Actors and actresses were told there will be roles for eight women and 12 men, with six roles requiring on-stage nudity.
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