Nifty
Bailiwick Repertory
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Not long ago I turned up my nose at Bailiwick’s cavalcade of “cock teasing masquerading as theater.” But as the gay community continues its wholesale abandonment of the radical sexual politics that once launched it toward liberation–embracing instead neocon ideals and heterosexist norms in its hunger for assimilation–I’ve come to see the Bailiwick nudie shows as critical instances of cultural resistance. In a nation that can barely acknowledge sexual pleasure let alone its myriad forms of expression (unless peddling soft drinks or gum, of course), Bailiwick insists on rubbing it in our faces. Even when the shows are dreadful–Jeff Stryker Does Hard Time pops to mind like a post-traumatic flashback–perhaps important work is being done to keep the atrophied heart of the sexual revolution pumping. And hey, if Grandma can drop 50 bucks to watch a chandelier crash and call it theater, I can spend half that for 90 minutes of a really nice ass.
So this year I’m gung ho for Bailiwick’s sex shows, and Scott Lee Heckman’s Nifty is as disarmingly subversive as any of them. About 75 minutes long, it features five performers–mostly in advanced states of undress–reading gay erotic stories pulled from the Nifty Archives, a Web site glutted with sexual fantasies dumped there by hordes of horny Netizens. The site is something of a raw Penthouse Forum, complete with sections on bestiality and incest, but it’s run by volunteers and generates no income through advertising. Each week Heckman plans to assemble a different selection of stories, and if opening night’s lineup was any indication, the material won’t get too outlandish–nothing like my favorite Nifty titles: “Tales of a Young Mutant,” “Cumming at the Boy Scout Meeting,” and the now classic “Naked Tom Sawyer and His House Guests.”
Nifty is one of those rare theater experiences that lies well beyond the rules of decorum. It’s impossible to say how “good” or “bad” the show is, for all it attempts to do is allow the audience to confront cultural taboos viscerally. And at that it’s undeniably successful.
