Dance Naked Creative’s Approach to Human Sexuality Is Playful, Thoughtful and Liberated

Twenty-five years ago, Eleanor O’Brien donned a G-string and climbed into a cage for her role in a Seattle production of Paula Vogel’s play Hot ‘n’ Throbbing.

“As an actor, I had to embody, like, ‘OK, I’m a confident, sexy woman,’ and it was such a stretch for me,” O’Brien says. “But it began a shift that took many years to get to the point where I actually considered myself a sexy person. That was the beginning of it.”

Today, O’Brien is the artistic director of the sex-positive theater company Dance Naked Creative (formerly Dance Naked Productions). And whether she’s delivering a monologue about a guy going down on her in a cabin or creating a show about her days as a “terrible” dominatrix in New York City, her approach to human sexuality is playful, thoughtful and liberated.

“My theater isn’t necessarily about being sexy,” she says. “It’s more about examining and looking at sexuality. It’s not like going to a strip club or a burlesque show. It’s much more about, ‘What is the experience like for people?’”

O’Brien infuses her work with both frankness and optimism. In part, that’s because when she started Dance Naked Creative in 2005, she wanted to offer a perspective that could surprise playgoers.

“What I knew that I wanted to make was theater that was a positive lens on sexuality, because I felt like a lot of what I saw was trauma,” she says. “If you saw sexuality in the theater, it tended to be rape or some kind of crisis, or it was a joke.”

It’s an approach that has resonated with audiences. O’Brien (who will perform her show Plan V: The Joyful Cult of Pussy Worship this summer at London’s Vagina Museum and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe) speaks glowingly of the people who attend her productions, eager to share stories of both sexual anguish and ecstasy.

“Shame thrives in darkness,” she says. “And in the theater, we’re literally shining a light on it.”