Naked girls. Reading. In Wellington.

In advance of Naked Girls Read­ing; the moth­er­hood edi­tion this Sat­ur­day at the Fringe Bar, I put a few ques­tions to its pro­duc­er, Hugo Grrrl.

Okay, first off. Naked girls read­ing — what in the heck is this? And who are you?
Naked Girls Read­ing is exact­ly what it sounds like — it’s com­plete­ly naked women read­ing lit­er­a­ture aloud on stage. If any­thing it’s a com­e­dy show. Oh, and I’m every­one’s friend­ly neigh­bour­hood trans­ves­tite, Hugo Grrrl. I pro­duce the shows in NZ, and I MC them.

Where did the event have its ori­gins? What made you bring it to Welling­ton?

It was borne out of the bur­lesque scene in Chica­go nine or so years ago. An Aus­tralian friend told me about the show and I fell in love with the idea right away.

As an audi­ence per­son, am I sup­posed to look straight at them? Avert my eyes polite­ly? Isn’t it awk­ward?

You can leer! Rel­ish is that dis­com­fort! Why are we so afraid of naked bod­ies? Why are cel­e­brat­ed naked female bod­ies scary? Come to the show, find out. But real­ly, you’ll be astound­ed at how nor­mal it all feels after that first brief moment of cul­ture shock.

How would you respond to crit­ics say­ing that naked = exploita­tion?

I have this con­ver­sa­tion A LOT. Almost exclu­sive­ly with peo­ple who have nev­er seen the show before, inter­est­ing­ly. Maybe what we’re doing is hor­ri­bly seedy and exploita­tive. Turn up, find out

Naked girls? WHAT ABOUT TEH MENZ????

Gasp! Yep! It’s a show not made by, for or about men. How­ev­er will they cope. When so lit­tle else in the world is.

What’s next for Naked Girls?

We’re doing shows this year in Dunedin, Christchurch and Auck­land. More naked boys shows, cause you horn­dogs loved that.’

And while I have you, I know you do drag as well. For some­one whose only expe­ri­ence of drag is Drag Race, can you give us a lit­tle 101 on the Welling­ton scene?

It’s good! Live, local drag is like noth­ing you’ll see on TV. If you like Drag Race, come on, get your ass off the couch and come and sup­port your local drag­sters. It’s out there, go find it.

PS: Naked Girls Read­ing is also doing a Food Edi­tion as part of Welling­ton on a Plate, fea­tur­ing our very own Jess.