Celebrating 10 Years of The Naked Stage and Guild Hall Partnership

The 10th season of The Naked Stage at Guild Hall in East Hampton begins this week.

A staged reading of "God of Carnage," by Yasmina Reza, opens the new decade of staged readings on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Different readings continue September through May, about every other Tuesday. They are free for the public.

While the partnership with Guild Hall is 10 years old, The Naked Stage theater is actually much older. It began in 2000, when Joshua Perl was getting his MFA in creative writing at Southampton College.

The idea, Perl said on Monday, was that "The text alone of really good plays could carry the day. It's a form of entertainment. Watching a play being read, listening to a play being read, would work was entertainment and it worked as a piece of theater."

Actors read from scripts, while sitting on the stage with no props and costumes. They perform new works from up-and-coming local writers, as well as old favorites. A lead artist takes on each script, works with the cast in rehearsal, usually with just a few weeks before the reading, Perl said.

"It's the place you come from, where you are most vulnerable," Perl said. The name, of course, followed suit.

When the college closed, Perl was looking for a new home. He had recently put on a production of "Macbeth" with Josh Gladstone, Guild Hall's artistic director, in the director's seat and they discussed moving The Naked Stage east.

"The Naked Stage readings are an essential part of Guild Hall’s programming for the past 10 years," said Ruth Appelhof, Guild Hall's executive director. "They bring together playwrights, actors and directors in our community to produce classic works, as well as nurture and cultivate new and experimental pieces in a professional theater,” she said, adding,  “These readings are free and open to the public and have a loyal following.”

Perl doesn't have an exact count of how many readings have been performed since — perhaps around 120, he said.

"We've also worked in other places; the Montauk Library, we built the Black Box at the Bridgehampton Community House — we've grown every year."

The Naked Stage subtly became HITFest, the Hamptons Independent Theatre Festival which performed "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Bridgehampton this summer, though the essence of The Naked Stage has remained.

HITFest is a not-for-profit "serving as an incubator and laboratory for theatre artists to practice and explore their craft free from the constraints of production schedules, exorbitant budgets, and the scarcity of time," according to its website. Perl is a co-founder along with Peter Zablotsky, and serves as the artistic director.

Perl said the readings for The Naked Stage at Guild Hall are often trials for full production.

Springs residents Gladstone and his wife Kate Meuth and several other local actors often perform the readings. Clodagh Bowyer, Tina Jones, Seth Hendricks and Perl, who lives in Hampton Bays, will perform in "God of Carnage" on Tuesday.

Coming up this season, "Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo," by Rajiv Joseph, will be featured on Oct. 2, "Porter’s Will," by Monica Bauer, on Oct. 16, and "The Best Play Ever…Seriously!," by Mike Anderson, on Nov. 27. For more a list of plays, as they are added, click here.