March 01, 2000 03:00pm
Curtain Rises Again on Nude Macbeth Scene at Nightclub
Source: AP
(CASSELBERRY, FL) -- The curtain was set to rise again Wednesday night for an adult nightclub revue featuring a scene from "Macbeth" performed in the nude.
Dancers at Club Juana were to debut a revamped version of their revue, titled "Femme Fatale," which got them in trouble with the law the last time they performed it.
The original performance, staged last May, consisted of a series of skits written to satirize and challenge restrictions on nudity in adult clubs implemented by Casselberry and Seminole County.
The best-known skit it contained was the witches' scene from the William Shakespeare tragedy "Macbeth." In the original "Femme Fatale" version, three dancers held hands and circled a cauldron wearing nothing but pointy black hats and shoes.
Afterward, the performers were charged with violating Casselberry's anti-nudity ordinance and fined $100 each.
In January, Circuit Judge O.H. Eaton Jr. cleared the way for a return of the production. The judge ruled that public nudity in a stage production is allowed, provided it constitutes bona fide artistic merit. The Club Juana production, Eaton ruled, amounts to legitimate art.
"The judge said it wasn't against the law and we're expressing our freedom to have these plays," Michael Pinter, Club Juana's owner, said Wednesday.
About a quarter of the revamped production consists of new material, he said, though the Macbeth scene is still in the half hour-long performance.
A skit titled "Busted" pokes fun at the legal trouble the dancers faced last May, said Morris Sullivan, the scribe of the non-Shakespearean sections of the production.
In the skit, a dancer playing a police officer breaks up the performance of another dancer to make sure she is complying with local ordinances. The dancers get tangled up in a tape measure and end up on top of each other in the nude.
The two characters then are hauled into a courtroom, where they sing songs using lyrics taken from the real life judge's opinion.
The revue was to be performed three times a night between Wednesday and Saturday.
Officers from the Seminole County City-County Investigative Bureau planned to videotape the performance to make sure it complies with the judge's ruling, said Steve Olson, a spokesman for the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.
"It's to document the accuracy of what occurs there," Olson said.
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