Nudity at the Supreme Court
Arguing before the Supreme Court can feel a bit theatrical; one theater company, Elevator Repair Service, has turned an actual oral argument into a play. The case, Barnes v. Glen Theatre, was one in a string of nude dancing cases that came to the Court, this one over a First Amendment violation when Indiana obliged dancers to wear pasties and g-strings. In Arguendo, now at the Woolly Mammoth, actors depict the oral argument verbatim—though justices (each with their own exaggerated mannerisms) dance and roll about the stage in their high-backed chairs, and one counsel brings the argument's exploration of nudity on stage to life. Before the show, we snapped WilmerHale appellate & Supreme Court litigation chair Seth Waxman and vice chair Paul Wolfson flanking Arguendo producer Ariana Smart Truman and NPR legal correspondent Nina Totenberg. Seth, Paul, and Nina (along with ERS artistic director John Collins) did a panel discussion post-show.
Arguendo is timely, with the discussion around what constitutes "speech" widespread in light of McCutcheon. The play brings the text of past opinions and statutes in as another actor, with it projected on the entire back wall (and even taking a bow with the cast). The show also pulls in an epilogue with Justice Ginsburg explaining the origin of her collars (a great contrast to the earlier attire-related discussions in the show), and a nod to Gilbert and Sullivan. In the talk-back, Nina and Seth mentioned the FCC indecency case that Seth argued representing ABC, where he pointed out the bare-chested and bare-bottomed statues in the Supreme Court—he says the moment wasn't planned, and he'd just noticed the statues that day.
Here's Elevator Repair Service founder John Collins, who tells us he's been interested in law since debating in high school. ERS creates original works from unusual material—like using the text of The Great Gatsby verbatim, in Gatz, which led to his own legal exploration while trying to get the rights to show the play in New York. He then started downloading and listening to Supreme Court argument recordings (he showed us a long list of them on his cell phone), which led him to think that they could be used in a theatrical way.
