Comfortable in her own skin

You might or might not see Maria Glanz au naturel during her one-woman show, "See Me Naked." As writer, director and star of the production, it’s her prerogative to keep her clothes on if she wants, and if she feels the audience can’t handle nudity, she’ll skip it.

"It’s structured so that I’m not naked for the whole play, but there is a part where I am, and there have been a handful of times that I have not done it because I didn’t feel it was the right thing to do.

"One time I asked these guys in the front row to close their eyes," she said. "A lot of times I talk to the audience, and there were these men in the front row who were really conservative and would not talk back to me, but I didn’t want to let down the rest of the audience, so I told just those men to close their eyes and they did."

The comedy is an examination of boundaries and feelings related to being naked. Although body-image woes and the objectification of women have become politicized issues, the genesis of the play was much simpler than that.

"It started as a joke," Glanz said during a phone interview from her home in Seattle. In 2001, Glanz, who spent 12 years in Hawaii and studied theater at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, was touring theaters in Canada with her play "Pu‘u­ho­nua (Place of Refuge)." "It got beautiful reviews, but tickets were not selling very well," she said. "People didn’t know what the title meant; it was very dark. At the same time, I noticed any production with a warning about nudity was selling out."

She told a stage director, "If I were naked and funny, I could be making a fortune."

"He said, ‘Say that again. What would you call it?’"

"See Me Naked" is the result of that conversation.

"I started thinking, what is it about seeing someone naked onstage that is still so fascinating? It wasn’t a goal to make a statement, but came from a place of art."

The production ponders the subject of nudity through the ages, while her character attempts to work up the confidence to deliver a burlesque performance. It turns out to be a fail, at which point she opens up to the audience about her reason for exposing herself publicly.

At the time she wrote "See Me Naked," burlesque theater was a thing of the past. Glanz said she found inspiration in the 1996 Demi Moore film "Striptease," which allowed women to release their exotic-dancer spirit and launched pole-dancing classes across the nation. Perhaps women’s growing comfort with their bodies explains the revival of burlesque theater today. Glanz said she continues to update the production with current pop-culture references.

Glanz, who describes herself as being closer to 50 than 40, said she was always comfortable in her own skin, but body image is something she thinks about more as she grows older.

"My external image is very different than I feel on the inside, but I feel no more discomfort with nudity than the average woman," she said. "I’ve known women who suffered from bulimia and anorexia. When I first performed the show in Seattle, I had a group of girlfriends come to watch, and one of them had struggled a lot with bulimia.

"That night, she went home and took off all her clothes and stood in front of the mirror and laughed at herself. She was poking herself in the stomach, and it was the first time she felt joy and goofiness about her body instead of shame or pain.

"There is so much love and healing that happens with laughter."