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In what appears to be a reversal of conventional gender roles the male characters of the New Zealand play Ladies Night (1987) and the British film The Full Monty (1997) strip for a female audience. In 1998, the playwrights filed a plagiarism lawsuit claiming the film merely opened out their original text. STRIPPING MEN explores Ladies Night and The Full Monty as symptoms and representations of a so-called male crisis, comparing them to see how the men that make them (re)define maleness in the Post-feminist era. It examines the notion that popular (male) culture has taken over in essence, plagiarised the position of women as victims of social oppression. What do men achieve by appropriating the role and discourse of the female as other? In stripping back the generic layers that are used to stage/frame the male bodies and their relationship with the audience, what is revealed is the successful attempt by men to reclaim social dominance by redressing themselves in feminism and representing equality´ between men and women.

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A long-time member of Free Theatre Christchurch, recent productions include: FAUST CHROMA, ELLA and SUSN and DISTRACTION CAMP (freetheatre.org.nz). He completed a PhD on New Zealand solo performance with the Theatre and Film Studies Department (Canterbury University, New Zealand) and is developing the performance research project, Te Puna Toi.

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