I have seen a lot of plays in my time, so I have seen a lot of man parts. In fact, I have seen more man parts on stage than I have seen in real life. Have you ever noticed how movies show boobs but plays show dicks? I have seen King Lear’s stuff as he wanders the heath, incoherent. I have seen Dude in Jail’s stuff (Mamet? Shepard?) as he talks to his cell mate. I have seen Young Spock’s stuff in Angels in America, the greatest play ever written. This is just a small sample. The celebrity sample, if you will. Allow me to translate: I have seen stuff belonging to Ian McKellan, Kenneth Branagh, and Zachary Quinto. Every single time, though I tried to play it cool, I was compelled by forces greater than me to turn to my companion and go: Oh My. God. And, my friends, that’s just the celebrity stuff. I have seen the stuff belonging to working actors in many cities, in plays both classical and modern. And yet and I have seen very few boobs on stage. The only example that comes to mind, actually, is Hair, and there was equal opportunity boobage/stuffage there. The sun shone in an equal opportunity sort of way, if you know what I mean.
I’m trying to figure out if this means theatre is a more feminist medium than movies, or vice versa. Like, enlightened theatre directors don’t want to be sexist, so they don’t deign to write boobage, but they don’t mind stuffage? But probably not. It’s probably more a case of cowboys playing doctor in a David Gilmour Serious Heterosexual Guy sort of way. But then I think of HBO. But half of that is Lena Dunham’s fault anyway. So who knows?