Nudity - the actor's POV

Hi everyone. Being actually invovled with one of the plays dicussed here - Peter Shaffer's "Equus" - I feel compelled to add my two cents becuase this topic has been of some concern to us when deciding how to go about staging the show. The script actually does call for nudity, when Jill and Alan get together; Shaffer justifies this by explaining that it is indicicative of Alan's psychological "nakedness". I personally, having just recently been as close as I'm ever going to get to being naked on stage (boxers) understand from an actor's view the added stress of baring your all-important "body" for all to see, judge, critcise with their friends etc. I do, however, believe that nudity can be quite powerful and profound yet is more likely to be powerfully distracting. As someone mentioned earlier in this debate it is almost impossible to remove nudity from a sexual context, the sheer weight of importance culturally attributed to how we look conplicates things - as soon as we see a naked body, we usually analyse it's faults and flaws and thus stop thinking about the performance.
Admittedly, I am projecting my own discomfort at appearing nude onto others and I'm sure many people feel quite comfortable baring their bodies, but in Equus, the level of nudity that was chosen was not based on the need for a gratuitous shock, or just because the actor wanted to.
Also, from an onstage viewpoint it is incredibly disturbing and offputing - it's quite hard to stay focused when one of your friends is jumping around nude right in front of you. It's not enough for the actor to be comfortable with nudity, the whole cast must be accepting other wise it puts strain and tension onto everyone. Add to all this the fact that "Equus" is a high school tee text and we wish to draw school audiences, who legally aren't allowed to see that kind of thing...

Anyway, at the end of the day, it all comes down to how people feel about their bodies and others. While trying to avoid sweeping generilastions I will still venture to say that nudity almost never serves a constructive purpose - the naked body is too important an object; too sexual, too powerfully distracting - that in the end genitalia on stage will only end up detracting from a performance, rather than heightening it.
Whatever you view, come along and make your own decision at UDS's EQUUS - 1st, 2nd, 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th of September @ 8pm, Dolphin Theatre, UWA, tickets $11/13

ps thanx for reading =)