Courtesy of Buntport Theater Company
Audio By Carbonatix
After 25 years and 52 original shows, a play has to be pretty special for Buntport Theater to revisit a production. In 2014, Buntport dared to tread where others feared, crafting Naughty Bits, a play as eccentric and daring as its name suggests. Now it’s reviving this audacious, decades-spanning comedy about history, art and a statue’s missing penis, promising Denver audiences an uproarious adventure through time and taboo.
“In the traditional theater world, there are certain plays that get reproduced constantly, but people expect us to have new work all the time because that is what we do,” says Buntport member Brian Colonna. “It’s always interesting to see the differences between then and now, whenever we revisit a piece. Naughty Bits’ discussion of the moralistic debate we have around language, gender and things like that feels sadly current in a way that some of our other plays are not anymore. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone saw this and walked away thinking it was created for the first time in 2023.”
The narrative revolves around the Lansdowne Hercules, a statue steeped in history that’s housed in the Getty Museum. Restored meticulously save for a conspicuously missing member, this sculpture becomes the linchpin connecting three disparate eras: the roaring ’20s, the conservative ’50s and the perplexing mid-2000s. Through this curious lens, Naughty Bits explores societal attitudes around nudity, moral debates about gender, and the timeless absurdity of the human condition.
“I think it’s something everyone would benefit from and enjoy seeing,” says company member Erik Edborg. “It’s silly, thoughtful, and you will actually learn stuff about art history.”
The Buntport team can’t quite recall the original inspiration for the show, though.
“I feel like someone either read or watched something about the statue, but honestly, it’s been so long that it’s hard to remember exactly where it started,” Colonna admits. “Initially, it seemed like a disconnected puzzle. But as we delved deeper, connections emerged, and Naughty Bits transformed into this intricate interplay of three overlapping timelines.”
Every era has its own distinct characters: The 1920s is loosely based on the life of Harry Selfridge (Colonna) and Jenny Dolly (Erin Rollman); the 1950s centers on an art expert (Edborg), who is giving a lecture about the statue; and the contemporary setting features a romance novelist (Hannah Duggan) arguing with her editor about the language used in the book.
“Although it initially seems like you’re going to see each timeline one at a time, they start overlapping, and there’s a lot of physicality, with near misses between the people or visual references that are happening between timelines,” Rollman says. “And then, eventually, they all kind of crash into each other. There’s a real playful nature to the storytelling. One timeline might ask a question, and then it cuts to another timeline for the answer, and it just sort of has these wild juxtapositions that are quite funny.”
Returning to one of their past shows has a different rhythm than producing an entirely original work. They have more time for detail, for example.
“In many ways, revisiting shows is much more fun for us because we have more of a chance to explore the things that we didn’t have time for when we were scrambling around trying to create the show,” says Edborg. “When it’s solid, like Naughty Bits is now, you can go back and look at your character and say, ‘Well, this doesn’t make sense,’ or ‘I’m going to play this differently,’ so I always enjoy when we revive our older shows.”
When Buntport remounted plays in the past, they restaged them within three to five years of a show’s initial development. However, with Naughty Bits, “it’s different and interesting because it’s been nine years,” says tech guru SamAnTha Schmitz. “If we barely remember it, how can anyone else? Even if you saw it in the past, come see it again – because it’ll be like a new show.”
“With all the stuff going on around the country, like the [Florida principal] who was fired for showing pictures of the statue of David, it is still relevant, because classical art continues to be weaponized by a bunch of pearl-clutching ‘Think of the children’ people whose agenda completely misses the point of the art,” Rollman says. “Naughty Bits has a line that says you shouldn’t worry about what other people’s privates look like – just worry about your own privates. That line is spoken in context of the statue, but I think it’s also something that’s very pertinent to today: Who cares what other people’s privates look like?”
Whether you are a longtime Buntport fan or a newcomer to the troupe, this play is a testament to the company’s unique place in the local theater scene.
“Naughty Bits is kind of the epitome of the space we inhabit in the Denver market,” says Colonna. “You’re going to get something a little stranger than at other places. Over the years, we have created a body of work that sits next to traditional theater; however, we want to see this kind of work all over town, and it is exciting that there is so much more original work happening now than when we first started working here. That’s a real success story in Denver, and hopefully, as the city continues to evolve, we’ll continue to see more new work than ever before.”
You won’t need to wait long for completely new work from Buntport. While development won’t really kick in until after Naughty Bits, the team plans to premiere its 53rd original play on March 1, 2024. In the meantime, don’t miss this rare opportunity to witness a blast from the troupe’s past.
“Naughty Bits is a ridiculous romp, but it also seems particularly pertinent at the moment, with the current efforts to censor art – we’re looking at you, Florida,” Rollman says. “I don’t want people to think that there’s actually anything inappropriate in the show. It does contain, in the most absurd way imaginable, the sexiest thing that we’ve tried, although I’m putting ‘sexy’ in huge quotes. We’re not actually attempting to be sexy, but something very silly and absurd happens cast-wise that has to be seen on stage to be believed.”
Naughty Bits runs Friday, October 6, through Sunday, October 22, at Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan Street; get tickets at buntport.com.