STRIPPING DOWN FOR ART

THEATREGOERS SWEAT IT OUT FOR AN UNUSUAL PERFORMANCE IN AN NYC SAUNA

- STORY: RACHEL SHERMAN / NYT

If the subway is the great equaliser, so is the sauna, where social classes dissolve into a shared suffering.

On a humid, rainy night, theatregoers gathered at the Russian and Turkish Baths in the East Village for a taste of both.

Attendees old and young stripped down to swimsuits and navy robes to see Dutchman, a play set in a sweltering, un-air-conditioned subway car.

It’s the second time the production has been staged at the bathhouse on 10th Street. In 2013, Rashid Johnson, primarily a visual artist and filmmaker, adapted and directed Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play about race and sex, and, inspired by his weekly shvitz, staged it in a sauna. “It felt so natural,” Johnson, 48, said of the dramatic setting. “It's almost strangely obvious.”

Now, the one-act play is back for a five-night run to mark the 20th anniversary of Performa, the New York performance-art biennial. The revival also coincides with Johnson’s first major museum survey, on view at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum until mid-January.

It is not a show for the faint of heart. Racial slurs are hurled multiple times, and, in temperatures that far exceed most home thermostats, one could actually faint. “Somewhere in the 150s (about 65C),” Dmitry Shapiro, a co-owner of the baths, said after checking the temperature in the Russian Room.