On Audiences

My secret Garden

"We spend most of our fucking lives trying to be alone, trying to improve the privacy of our fucking. But fantasy goes into the opposite direction: more often than not there are other people present. Not being part of the scene (orgy) but simply being present. Also the possibility of being seen, watched, discovered, can be more exciting than the actual presence of an audience. But not all fantasy audiences are passive bystanders some are active and the participating role of a real audience - they have them applaud and the fantasizer becomes the Sarah Bernhard of Fucking and the Fellini of Fantasy, controlling both her own performance and that of the audience, her critics, pacing one against the other so that her fantasy audience reinforces her fantasy performance. Some of the cast of Oh Calcutta became so dependent on the excitement the audience brought to their performance in the theatre, that they were unable to perform sexually without an audience at home."

Caroline's role required her to spend an entire evening on stage almost totally nude with a long scene of sexual intercourse. She says:

Ever since I had to do the love scene in the play I've needed to feel that the same audience is there when I'm making love at home or anywhere else offstage. I suppose having to be, or at least to appear to be, so excited on the stage every night in front of so many people has really affected me. At first I tried to tell myself that it was just another role... you have to act so many emotions in the theatre, and there is all that "Method" business of feeling yourself into the part... But as I said in the beginning I tried to keep a little distance between the personal me, and me, the actress, making love in front of all those people. But I couldn't. As I got more and more used to the role, more comfortable in it, I found that instead of dreading the moment when I had to begin, I was looking forward to it. My nipples would become tight and erect. It was a surprisingly seductive feeling, one I enjoyed. I began wearing tighter and tighter blouses, filmier ones, more see-through, so that the audience could see the excitement I felt right down - or up - to my nipples. I needed the audiences excitement for my own... a form of complicity was set up between them and me, a sexual conspiracy which heightened my ability, or rather, desire to play the part.

The silence, the tension in the theatre during the scene communicates itself through the house - from me to them, from them to me - and at the end of the night's performance, when they clap and call me back for curtain call after curtain call, I feel it's not only the actress they're applauding, but me, the woman too. Acting often tends to split you off from yourself, and you don't know who you are. But in this role, the audience's applause - their approval - somehow reunites the actress in me with the private self in me. Now when I make love privately, I sometimes think, Oh, whats the use... it's all so dull and unstimulating. And there's this feeling of anxiety. It's as if I'm not sure if I'm doing it well, you see, no matter what the man says.

Before this play I didn't need fantasies. Or that's what I would have told you six months ago. I realize now that somewhere in the back of my mind I'd always had someone watching while I made love: me. The split between the me who is in the act, actually making love , and the me who is watching, this split is healed by the audience taking over the role of the watcher and applauding me for my efforts. I can't tell you the feeling of satisfaction it gives me.

I remember the first time we did the love scene before an audience. The rehearsals had naturally been private, and I had been able to be professionally cool and clinical about it. But when they applauded... Now I need an audience; without it there's just no excitement. So even if I'm with the man I'm in love with, somehow in my mind I twist his face around so that it's the face of the actor I'm in the play with. The funny thing is, I don't even like the actor. Maybe that makes t even more exciting or me, I don't know. I haven't really worked this out. But I think it's because behind him, behind his back is the audience, and they're applauding him for making love to me and applauding me for responding to him in such a loving way. And as my own excitement mounts and mounts, the applause gets louder and louder....