From: mkent@netcom.com (Marty Kent)
Subject: Notes on Xplicit Players' Two-Week Tour
Organization: Netcom 
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 08:03:34 GMT

Here's a piece about our recent two-week tour, on which we
visited Austin Tx, Rochester and Syracuse NY, and Amherst Mass.
This one's from Deb Moore, "director" of the Xplicits. I may post
my own description of the tour at a later date, if I can get it
up for the enterprise... 

Note that our next performance is in San Francisco, at New
College, 777 Valencia St, at 5pm on Sat 14 November, and everyone
is very welcome to attend. If you have any specific questions,
you can feel free to send me email...

Marty Kent

==================================================

X-Plicit Players' Tour 
or "words" from the Shamanatrix
by Debbie Moore, Nov. 1, 1992 

As we traveled across country on our 15-day performance tour, 
"word" of us preceded us.  News of our local Berkeley daily 
life, adventures and arrest, our U.C. Berkeley "nude-in" and 
topfree street actions, our five-hour naked and audience 
participatory performances preceded us in written form 
everywhere we went.  Those who greeted us, already informed 
by "word," word of mouth, newspaper word, radio word, T.V. 
and computer bulletin-board word, met us and made the 
transition into greeting us "in-person".  

For the X-plicit Players, greeting us "in-person", is much 
more our way.  In-person we love to dwell as fully as 
possible within the world of the other, to be as personal as 
we possibly can be with each other and each new person.  
Between us we have the habit of speaking with our bodies, of 
entering through the veil of permission the body presents.  
We carried our bodies across the country as one would a 
tribal feast, to be placed before others, others who were 
made ready for us by preparatory words, offering ourselves to 
be taken in and savored.  

At each event, with each person we had to conduct a sort of 
exorcism of "words," to dispense with and sort through the 
conceptions and misconceptions, replacing word with 
ourselves, committing personal attention toward each and 
every person, until direct experience of each other finally 
replaced word communication completely.  We joyfully 
experienced the inner splendor of each person, ran to their 
highest hills, and sat in the darkness of their valleys, 
waded through their marshes, tasted the momentum of their 
life at this time.  We drank of people who came to greet us 
and were satisfied by the gifts of themselves that sprang 
from their flesh.  

This very personal feasting is the reason we move ourselves 
across the country to perform within crowds of others, 
causing us to joust words and untangle the morass of "causes" 
we are said to represent.  Now that our recent voyage of 
intimacy and nudity is complete, I joust with words again, 
through the morass of interpretation and misinterpretation to 
answer your beautiful letters and questions, your strangely 
slanted news articles and hopeful newscasts, by putting these 
words of response out to you.  I hope to fall somewhere 
between your mind and your body, hope to dodge the dullness 
of braininess and conjecture, and go right to the heart of 
our X-plicit, that is "direct and fully expressed" 
experience.  I send you my words, not because it is the 
preferred mode -- my body tells you more.  But I return to 
words until our bodies can meet again, and with the hope that 
at least some words will give you a sense of me and how I 
experienced all of the recent cross-country voyage.  This 
will be only one of many descriptions you may get of X-plicit 
Players Love Actions and the "X-plicit Act of Intimacy," but 
at least you will know from me why I did things and how I 
experienced them.


     Topfree Love Actions, Berkeley and San Francisco, 
8/10/92

Every day, Nina, Marty and I live our life within the realm 
of gentle availability to each others' bodies, noticing that 
keeping shirts off outdoors adds to our feeling of awareness 
and tenderness.  Bob and J'Ann, other X-plicit Players, join 
us in this action when home from their day jobs.  The 
Berkeley culture shakes and changes around us, as months go 
by allowing numerous police officers and passersby to engage 
us in conversation and investigation.  We three find 
ourselves most often cradled in the warm embrace of each 
other, a mental encircling that is our personal reason for 
such body exposure.  Others align with us to stand up for 
womanhood and choice, freedom of speech, equality with men 
and sheer love of nakedness.  We support all of these issues, 
but our motivations are most personal...our actions spring 
from the simple sense that to us our bodies are mobile homes 
for each other, places that we expose to work and play out 
our tendernesses.  

A woman Christian Pastor and neighbor of ours places us under 
citizen's arrest and we go to jail with breasts exposed.  
Happy and sad...we are happy because we can feel that the 
very children she wishes to protect from our breasts are 
really being freed by our acts of shamelessness; sad because 
jail is a direct experience of where children are kept, held 
in the cold and shame of their parents' teachings of fear of 
the body.  Words on the radio, words in the press, words 
about us send out more messages of abandoning shame, and 
enjoying the invitation to see each other and each other's 
intimacy.  

The district attorney drops the case, verifying that simple 
nudity is legal.  I respond to the experience of jail by 
sending out a request to everyone to bring their intimacies, 
their gestures of tenderness, personal communion with their 
loved ones, out of the bedroom and backroom of their lives 
into the streets for all to see.  We have a topfree 
pilgrimage (Oct 11) through Berkeley and San Francisco where 
a handful of us are naked, a dozen are topfree and about 
fifty are enthused guardians and witnesses.  During the 
march, we perform about ten mini-performances, that is, acts 
of direct physical embrace and mental listening to each 
other;  a lie-in at Sproul Hall, a tree-hugging in the 
eucalyptus grove, a chanting of "the love I have is 
everything, my nakedness will always sing" all the way up my 
street, Bancroft Way, to U.C. Berkeley campus.  Our bodies 
make one long procession of greeting each other and 
experiencing "us".  

Fifteen of us board the Bart train to San Francisco, with 
some shooting video and still camera as Bart police cite us 
for "disturbing others," while at the same time stating 
clearly that we are breaking no laws and that the 
"disturbance" cannot be pinpointed.  The sense of protection 
of each other through intense observation is growing.  People 
around us feel awake to our rights and our happiness to stand 
exposed and we alight with their warmth.
Those who videoed and photographed, who watched and listened, 
those who look enthused and hot with delight are carried 
inside our tenderness now.  

A piece of the culture has made room for our out-of-bounds 
intimacy, and the culture of our hometown takes on more of 
the direct "feel" of us.  Our house has an opened-out 
feeling, and the streets are more homey. Everywhere we go 
small conversations go on between us and those we meet in 
glances, touch and word.  It is a more personal experience to 
inhabit our neighborhood.


       Nude-In at U.C Berkeley, Oct 29, 1992

Andrew Martinez drew a crowd of about a thousand to the steps 
of Sproul Hall and introduced them to his objective to live 
naked and end the shame of the body.  Through the microphone, 
I directed a tour of each others' bodies in a context of 
absolute shamelessness, giving adults the authority of 
obstinate children who demand the right to see, paint, touch 
and identify with each other's bodies in innocent play.  To 
maintain a base for the focused mass identification, I built 
a sculpture of the people who offered their naked bodies, 
which I called the "Freedom of Speech Sculpture" and I 
announced, "We are freedom of speech, our bodies are freedom 
of speech, we are sensual, lusty, erotic beings, and this is 
not against the law."  The crowd answered our invitation to 
"feel us by watching, and keep us safe with their watching," 
by standing with rapt attention for the full forty minutes 
that our sculpture was built, painting us, touching us and 
heating us with their brightness of facial expression and 
passionate feeling.  

The nude-in was the most vibrant and warm expression of human 
force that I have ever seen on Sproul the 17 years I've lived 
in Berkeley.  It changed Berkeley culture from that day on, 
because the niche now exists whereby naked and physically 
intimate expression has an open place.  It is an opening that 
is maintainted by the warm welcoming nods, smiles and 
invitations to inhabit the streets and cafes, bookstores and 
sidewalks of Telegraph Ave. in any state of undress and 
simple hand-holding, or arm-in-arm tenderness that is our 
mode.


       U. of Texas, Austin, X-plicit tour 10/92

The underground core of people that we fell into rapture with 
during our five-hour performance last January, the people we 
felt pulling us back to Austin, came through for us by 
reappearing at the "Act of Intimacy" to voyage further 
together!   Rosita is now very pregnant and gave us the realm 
of her vulnerable body to gravitate around and experience.  
Placing many people around the globe of thunder that her 
belly exudes, the pattern of kicks and churning life her baby 
beats, we voyaged into hunger, and heat.  Rosita held fast to 
us, defying loneliness and passivity, for many at the 
performance.  We sank with her into the courage of infancy, 
into the passion to hold tight to each other.  

Chris and Max also returned to reunite with us from the 
January "Act of Intimacy" performance we had held.  We 
followed each other night after performance night, into the 
day time street actions of topfreeness and into the meeting 
ground these actions paved for new people to know us.  Talks 
began between us about our lives and choices, and invitation 
began toward each other, into a place beyond exclusion and 
physical denial.  

Linda Montano, who teaches performance art at U. of T., 
introduced us to the "Soft Men," some very hearty explorers 
of stage taboos.  Together we performed as bimbo-sluts, 
wearing blonde wigs and white lipstick, taking to the soap 
opera stage with lusty abandon, and acting out the roles of 
uncontrollable, on-the-make, incompetents, of the lewd and 
lascivious variety, who have no limits and no social poise.  
We acted out roles that real life press and police have 
created for us.  Together with the "Soft Men" we joked and 
enticed the minds of the audience from the distancing hipness 
of soap operas down into the same place of touch where the 
"Act of Intimacy" begins.  

Under the wigs and 60's make-up, under the topfree dance on 
U. of Texas, so very tame, Freedom of Speech Plaza, under the 
dark brown nipples and full-blown belly of Rosita's body, 
under the vine-covered trellis of Les Amis cafe of our daily
breastful-breakfast outdoor songfests, under the angelic 
wings of Linda Montano's performance art classroom topfree-
video appearance, under the two five-hour rituals of our "Act 
of Intimacy" performance came one sound: the deep sound of 
our voyage into one more tasting of each other's mind and 
body.  The sound of Austin responded with committments we 
made to return to each other again.


     Rochester and Syracuse, X-plicit tour 10/92

Morley Schloss willed us to him with promises to draw crowds 
to meet us and attend our events.  And the five nights of 
performance and two days of workshops we led, he filled with 
numbers, the size of which we had rarely dealt with before.  
The masses he gathered around us came equipped with 
descriptions from the press, radio and T.V. about our
voyages through the body into the realm of knowing each 
other.  Press appeared wanting to know "how this is different 
than pornography" to which I answered, "don't censor either, 
or even try to define either us or pornographers, just come 
closer to us and involve yourself more directly with us if 
you wish to improve or understand what we are."  

Radio interviewers appeared, (Brother Wheaze) wanting to know 
"how we can invite the redneck and the dangerous likes of his 
listener audience to our performances," to which I answered, 
"the strength of our vulnerability can handle anyone, even 
you, Brother Wheaze - here, look at my nakedness through this 
magnifying glass!"   

Long time nudists wanted to know how to set up touching and 
cuddling groups in their neighborhoods, to which we answered, 
"look at the person you are touching now, and take the next 
step closer to her directly: not to her nudity, but to her 
personally and what she needs from you."  

It was thrilling and inspiring to greet two Rochester 
audiences of eighty people each who clearly wanted to voyage 
past the growth groups way of touch that is erotic but 
general and mentally distant.  However, after the thrill came 
the necessity to get down to the real work of pushing past 
old safe habits of touch and insist on attempting to find new 
ways, to reach for new tools, to even attempt new states of 
awareness.  The spell of touchy-feely was upon us in the 
performance settings of eighty who lay down their bodies to 
fill the room with wall-to-wall nakedness.  Our performance 
changed dramatically as we juggled the misconceptions of how 
to touch each other without so many crutches, like no more 
goal of intercourse, no more goal of orgasm, no more goal of 
dating or selling yourself, no more stroking the other as a 
masturbatory stroking of yourself, no more avoiding, 
escaping, leaving this moment, this very direct moment we 
bring each other into.  

Four hours into one performance with everyone in the middle 
of this no-moreness I turned off our tour-of-touch audio tape 
and exclaimed, "This is not the night of the living dead, 
this is not growth-grope, stop touching us like this, you are 
boring us."  I couldn't believe my own words, because no one 
bores me, or at least gets away with trying to bore me.  But 
this massive audience was taking the delicate intensity of 
our personal voyaging, the voyage I began twenty years ago, 
one-on-one with someone I loved, and dulling it into a wave 
of vague massaging.  To drag ourselves into a return to the 
intensity, we had to take each other most purposefully into 
account, and clearly stop any other intruding agenda.  

To correct the eighty on their road of rubbing complacent 
touch into each other's skins I had to demand that each 
person stop the placing of value on the skin surface and 
place the value on the one, the life below the skin.  The 
voyage began with giving a damn about the being there 
screaming out a life from within the skin.  The voyage began 
with the confidence that we must and we will hear the 
mindscreams of the other, by listening with new abilities, 
new senses and new habits to the new other.  I slowly talked 
the audience through "body-listening," a way of hearing-
feeling the other through cheek-to-chest, or forehead-to-
armpit, from some strange link of unusual body part to 
another, just for the sake of finding the other.  

The X-plicit Players cast became adept at feeling who was on 
the quest toward each other and who was on the banks, lost 
and abandoned in habits of isolation.  Like bands of warrior 
poets, each group of two or three, each explorer made their 
way through what seemed like the imagination into the 
fullness of, the thread of the other person's shores of self.  
The mood shifted in the room of eighty, down-shifted and 
warmed, the magic returned, and we made our descent.  Five 
performances and thirty two hours of workshop later we 
finished our tour of Rochester with a final event.  

The last night event was a loosening of the reigns [pun 
intended?], where an audience mostly peopled by returnees 
from several of our events, traveled on skills we knew.  The 
skill to meet each other inwardly first, first before 
excursions of fleshly magic and body playfulness, the skill 
to know when the other is meeting you inwardly and when you 
are losing them, the skill to stay in search of the other, 
enthused by finding the other, brought us to a final 
readiness: the readiness to pledge an onward climb toward 
each other, through weekly meetings and concrete return 
visits, and this vow became the final act.  About a dozen 
people gathered around Morley committing to keep meeting, 
touching and playing their way into each others' lives and 
wants.  We all celebrated this very personal, one-on-one, 
underground place as the meeting-ground that would bring the 
X-plicit Players back to town again.  We left Rochester 
merrily, seeing Morley in such good hands.


           Hampshire College, Mass., X-plicit tour, 10/92

We drove the five hours to Northhampton after performing 
every night for over a week, exhausted but still eager to 
face the censorship battle brewing there.  Whitney Witt had 
invited us to be sponsored by her campus club, SeXpression, 
to put on our five-hour "X-plicit Act of Intimacy," 
performance.  She followed all of the standard campus 
proceedures to book us in an on-campus room. However, during 
the weeks leading to our arrival the administration retracted 
the booking of this room, cut off SeXpression from their own 
club funds, and called us on the phone to tell us not to 
come.  

Our performance and the freedom of expression issues 
surrounding it were an integral part of Whitney's senior 
thesis, as was the interest she has in graduate studies in 
law and the protection of artists' rights.  She dug in her 
heels and went right to work studying state law, speaking to 
ACLU lawyers, and stirring up any knowledge or interest she 
could from other campus groups on battling censorship.  
Whitney set up many meetings with the administration to 
assure them that the nature of the event would not threaten 
any student's safety.  Upon their request, she wrote a 
contract assuring that "no body orifices would be entered, no 
exchange of body fluids, no sexual intercourse would occur", 
quoting directly from the precautions X-plicit Players state 
in our script, and we signed the contract. 

But, the administration was unreachable in the conviction 
that, as they put it, their "liability" was too great. 
Whitney, students from SeXpression, other students and even 
enraged facutly members cried "censorship", believed the 
administration acted with complete disregard for first 
amendment rights and basic integrity by subverting the rights 
of a student club in order to protect status, image and a 
failing pocketbook.  SeXpression members, enraged radical 
faculty members and other students demonstrated with chalk 
writing on campus pavement, wrote news articles and strongly 
insisted that the performance would go on!  

All along the way, we X-plicits assured Whitney that we would 
be there to perform no matter what.  We arrived late Monday 
night to Whitney's apartment, and, after the warming of a 
home-cooked meal, we were graced by the sight of the 
SeXpression's bodies as they stood embracing each other, 
half-clothed as we stripped off our clothing in preparation 
for our "Sexart" lecture.  This was the first time we began 
our lecture encircling a group of intimates who led us into 
their embrace.  After reading the lecture words, and "body 
reading" Whitney and a few others, we all lay down together 
and began our research into how to deal with the censorship. 

Just as I had hoped, the context of tenderness and stark 
caring for each other drew our research into a very intensely 
personal place.  Really we were discussing what we could do 
to give back to Whitney personally what had been taken from 
her.  After sifting through vague ideas that some students
had, like, "let's have a rally and make a lot of noise about 
this on campus," or "let's get the administration to promise 
to have a meeting with us about this on campus", we got down 
to something far reaching, more fulfilling, and most 
importantly more personally giving to Whitney.  

We keep finding that the key to all censorship issues is to 
let ourselves really feel deeply with whoever is being 
personally damaged or wrongly treated by the censorship and 
simply right that wrong.  I said that right here and now I 
wanted to return to Whitney all that she had originally had, 
that is the booking of our on-campus room and our performance 
happening in it.  We could most directly give all back to 
Whitney by holding a rally/performance outdoors on campus to 
give students the right to see it and choose to attend it for 
themselves, alert students to the censorship going on and 
give them a way to oppose it, walk with any interested 
students into the room, take back the room originally 
promised, letting students from the rally usher us into the 
room, and have our performance on campus after all.  Whitney 
said that this would make her very happy, and that decided 
it.  

Led by the feeling of happiness restored to Whitney, 
SeXpression members awoke early the next morning to set up 
the outdoor rally and to cook us a homey breakfast.  The X-
plicit Players and SeXpression members merged in the promise 
to act as one, to perform as one, to face any consequences as 
one.  We encircled Whitney as she delivered her anti-
censorship speech at the rally of three hundred students.  
Then SeXpression encircled the X-plicit Players as we began 
our performance of the "Act of Intimacy" with a slow strip.  
Beginning with our mittens and wool hats, we X-plicits 
stripped clothing off to the waist and as one embracing body, 
we wrapped around a few students who sat watching the 
demonstration.  

I "body-read" those few students who clearly welcomed me with 
their eyes and hands. I spoke about their lives, their homes, 
their inner feeling, an act that stripped them and us 
inwardly and sent a hush through the rally.  In this feeling 
of raw vulnerability we asked students to end the censorship 
with us by escorting us to the room and taking it.  

About fifty students walked across campus with us, we strode 
topfree, and we had our five-hour performance there.  Every 
hour we were visited by the Dean of Students and other campus 
officials who served us with written and verbal documentation 
that we were trespassing. We weathered the storm of this by 
just focusing harder on each other.  Enduring the surrealism 
of their aggressive visits just brought about a deeper groove 
that we had to dig with each other.  I had to trash the usual 
structure of our performance script almost entirely due to 
the pressure upon us that we would surely be arrested any 
moment, (backed up by many student reports that police were 
closing in, etc.), and I invented a form of performance that 
took the students into the deepest acts of trust, the most 
important aspects of the "Act of Intimacy," immediately.  

The raw edge of our intimacy had a tone of insistence that 
pushed students out toward each other in amazing ways.  
During the last hour of the performance I invited any 
question, to which one student whispered a plea for rescue 
from loneliness.  The plea was so innocent and based on such 
bravery, our nerves were so raw and exposed, that all I could 
do was to plead with her.  I asked the other students who 
wanted to respond to her by taking on the responsibility for 
her lonliness directly. About a dozen students came forward, 
placing their hands on her naked body, they described the 
things that would come to pass between them, the visits, the 
new togethernesses; they committed to on-going actions they 
would make to answer to her.  

Another student's question was how to get beyond the fears in 
his head that stopped him from fully responding to those 
around him.  We answered him by practicing with him the way 
he responds directly to each of us, as we spent the next hour 
involved in acts of direct physical abandon with him. Just 
practicing moving beyond fear and having to respond to each 
of us gave him his answer.  Finally Whitney and I vowed to 
keep moving toward each person there by creating an on-going 
event long distance that Whitney would run "in-person."  
About twelve students responded to Whitney's invitation to 
keep voyaging into each other weekly, by making a six-week 
committment to meet "in-person."  We left Whitney after 
jumping up and down for a long time, celebrating the advance 
beyond censorship, the advance on each other. SeXpression and 
X-plicts stay merged in soul and vow to return to each other 
in body.


     New College, San Francisco, performance Nov. 14, 1992

          Our plan to perform the "X-plicit Act of Intimacy" 
at New College, (777 Valencia Street) is preceeded by more 
"words" from T.V. and press, that add to the conceptions and 
misconceptions of us.  Dr. Dean Edell's show tried to 
railroad Andrew Martinez and us into a mainstreamable package 
of nudity devoid of personality or of any interest beyond 
nudity, a package that says nudity is the end, not the means.  
On the set of this national T.V. show we had to fight for our 
right to sit closely by each other, in each other's arms, 
even though sitting on a sofa in each other's arms on set was 
part of our agreement to appear.  

In response to the Dr.'s questions, I told the story of how 
our naked performance moved thirty teenagers to touch in 
exploration in an underground San Francisco rock 'n' roll 
club.  When the Dr. asked Marty, "what's your point?" Marty 
gestured to me and Nina and said, "we're the point, our 
intimacy; our nudity is our work clothes."  When asked by the 
mother of a toddler how to deal with her child's demand to go 
out naked I suggested that kids may have to talk a little 
more to teach any frightened adults not to fear nakedness, 
but living naked sure is fun and should be encouraged 
everywhere in any child who wants that life.  

Some of those who are most adamant about selling America on 
nudity as an end rather than a means expressed thorough 
disgust with our actions of nudity in contexts not designed 
or structured specifically for nudity.  It was as if we were 
breaking even deeper taboos against touch and disrupting the 
real estate territoriality that they assign to normalize 
nudity, and normalize even this T.V. show about nudity.  

With more mass media exposure comes the misconception that we 
are crusaders in normalizing what we are, or that we fit a 
niche already normalized. A recent San Francisco Chronicle 
article called us a "group marriage" and a "commune" after we 
explicitly requested that the reporter stop using both of 
those words to describe us.  I spent a lot of time 
establishing that both of those words do not apply to us 
because both typify modes of behavior based on separateness.   
"Group marriages" maintain for example the selection of 
sexual lovers that interact with mates separate of each 
other, and "communes" maintain the  co-habitation of people 
for financial or convience purposes while living out separate 
lives and separate intimacies, etc.  In answer to her 
questions about our personal life, we demanded that this 
reporter stop using her cliches and just use the word "inti-
mates" to describe the involvement we have with each other 
that is daily and deeply committed and on-going.  

We continue to joust with the press and the legal system, to 
create new words that invite more imagination and specificity 
and allow us to be experienced instead of packaged by 
thought.  But all in all we use words to invite you, and are 
hopeful that all of this moving around of "words" will reap 
the real reward, that is the real reward we want: that you 
will bring your body to us, and for the most personal 
reasons, put on your work clothes--your nudity, and get down 
to the acts of finding each other, giving us the rewarding 
chance to know you and meet you on our inner playground!  If 
all of this "word" moving brings about just a handful of us 
voyaging through our bodies to each other, inviting each 
other to travel across this country to each other's sides 
then we will have won, we will have gotten beyond the "word."  

If you have any ideas of where you want to invite us to 
perform our "X-plicit Act of Intimacy," keeping in mind that 
we will come based on a personal connection to you that you 
invite, and we perform anywhere from a livingroom to a 
bookstore, please respond to us through E-mail.  I welcome 
anyone to also reach us by phone at (510)540-0907. bye now, 
with love, the Shamanatrix, Debbie Moore. 


==========================================

NOTE change of physical address and phone number:

-- 
Marty Kent 				mkent@netcom.com
Sixth Sense R & D			510 848 6221
1914A Haste St.
Berkeley Ca 94704

Kent's Heuristic: Look for it first where you'd most like to find it.
"You're soaking in it..." - Madge
Newsgroups: rec.nude