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Outlying Islands as theatre of voyeurism: Ornithologists, naked bodies and the ‘pleasure of peeping’

ABSTRACT This article will discuss the suggestion that theatre can be classified as an act of voyeurism, where the performer (either as exhibitionist or ‘unaware’ of the audience's gaze) and the audience (the voyeur of this exchange) are placed in a legalized environment for that interaction. David Greig's Outlying Islands will be used as a case study for the exposition of this argument. Alongside the textual analysis, there will be explicit links to Philip Howard's original Traverse Theatre Company production of Outlying Islands and its critical reception. The playwright's own suggestions that his protagonists are ‘supposed to be there to watch birds, but really they watch each other’ (Greig in Rimmer 2002) will be re-contextualized in relation to the presence of the audience watching the performers' bodies performing onstage. Issues such as nudity in theatre and homosociality in remote social environments with their own possibilities of overt voyeurism (and exhibitionism) will also be explored.