Audio By Carbonatix
How does a theater company create a play about a statue missing a conspicuous part of its anatomy? The project began when Buntport Theater member Brian Colonna saw “Landsdowne Hercules” at the Getty Museum and brought up the statue at a pitch meeting. “I saw the statue and was interested in why the penis was missing,” he admits. “Cooler heads than mine prevailed and said there probably wasn’t that great of a story in why that part of the statue was gone. But as we talked about it, we thought that doing a show about a conspicuous missing piece that doesn’t really matter was a good hook.”
So Naughty Bits actually contains three story lines: One follows a stuffy lecturer attempting to explain the artistic significance of the statue while insisting that the missing piece is an unimportant one; another follows a romance novelist chatting with her agent about a potential new book — one with a really strange twist that involves the statue; and the third follows a young couple who rent the Landsdowne mansion in the 1920s, prior to the statue’s discovery.
“Everybody is talking about the same things — the legend of Hercules, censorship and art, penises being knocked off,” Colonna explains. “So all of these storylines are happening in the same place, on top of each other, and there’s this energy building about this beautiful piece of statuary, this perfectly formed Greek god. And it culminates in the first-ever Buntport sex scene, when the storylines all collide.”
Naughty Bits opens tonight and runs through October 4; tickets are $20 for opening and closing nights and $13 to $16 otherwise. Visit buntport.com to purchase yours.
Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 21, 3 p.m.; Sun., Sept. 28, 3 p.m.; Mon., Sept. 29, 8 p.m. Starts: Sept. 12. Continues through Oct. 4, 2014
