‘It’s All Right to Be Naked’ Delves Into a Woman’s Self-Discoveries

“This is not me,” warns poet Lisa Rafel, whose one-woman play “It’s All Right to Be Naked” begins previews today at the Skylight Theatre in Hollywood. “But you will know this character, and in that process you’ll know my point of view. It deals with being a woman, in every way. I have very positive feelings about what a woman is: her capabilities, her strength in the world.”

Her character, Annie, is a writer “who’s just ended a relationship and doesn’t know why; her grandmother’s just died, and she’s not getting along with her daughter,” Rafel said. “On this particular night, she decides to go into her writings--and discovers herself. As she reads her poems, she gets lost in them. And she actually writes onstage. It’s provocative, sexy in parts, and very honest.”

Rafel, who had earlier experimented with different performance formats--reading her poetry to music in galleries and museums--loves the revelatory quality of such work: “It’s a wonderful, cathartic way to get inside someone’s head.” And though she acts, sings and plays the piano, “it’s not a showcase,” stressed the writer, who is being directed by Guy Giarrizzo. “I want this piece to have a life after me. I want it to be about the work.”

Also opening this month:

Monday: Twenty-eight actors who will graduate from CalArts in June present a collection of scenes and monologues in three performances at the Odyssey Theatre in West Los Angeles. Admission is free.

Thursday: Based on the true story of Holocaust survivor Jack Eisner, Susan Nanus’ “The Survivor” (at the Hudson Theatre in Hollywood) tells of a group of teen-agers in the Warsaw ghetto.

Friday: A black comedy about the sophisticated and self-indulgent of Manhattan, Sonia Pincer’s novel “I-Land” has been adapted by Burbank’s Road Theatre Company for its West Coast premiere.

Friday: Hollywood’s West Coast Ensemble kicks off a Shakespeare repertory with a staging of “Hamlet,” followed by “Romeo and Juliet” on May 15 and the debut of Tony Tanner’s “Dreamers”--a musical adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”--on May 30.

Friday: At the Beverly Hills Playhouse, You Should Theatre hosts “Tools for the Spiritual Warrior,” a new comedy revue targeting the quest for spiritual enlightenment in today’s society.

Friday: Bertolt Brecht’s “Baal,” the story of the moral and physical disintegration of a feckless young poet, opens at the Open Fist Theatre Company in Hollywood.

Saturday: Direct from Washington, D.C., Gross National Product comes to the Odyssey Theatre with a new revue of political sketches, improvisations, political look-alikes, sound bites and satire.

May 14: “The Misanthrope,” Moliere’s satire on the impossibility of love, is updated to modern-day Los Angeles in Neil Bartlett’s adaptation at Beverly Hills’ Theatre 40.

May 14: “Fortune and Men’s Eyes,” John Herbert’s autobiographical story of a young man’s experience in a prison reformatory, gets a revival at the Coast Playhouse in West Hollywood.

May 16: Back by popular demand, performance artist Beth Lapides returns to Santa Monica’s Highways for a new run of “Un-Cabaret” late-night shows, joined by Judy Toll and Taylor Negron.

May 17: It’s a siege of family messes in Rod Parker’s bittersweet comedy, “One of Those Days,” making its world premiere at the Matrix Theatre in Hollywood.

May 20: Jon Tuttle’s “Terminal Cafe,” set in a New Mexico coal town supplying the Manhattan Project during World War II, opens at Hollywood’s Zephyr Theatre.

May 20: “Accomplice,” another twist-and-turn, nothing-is-as-it-seems comedy by Rupert Holmes (“Solitary Confinement”), opens at East West Players in Hollywood.

May 21: Stephen Nichols headlines as Mack the Knife in a new revival of Bertolt Brecht’s saga of love and crime in 1928 Berlin, “Threepenny Opera,” at Friends and Artists Theatre in Hollywood.

May 22: Mustapha Matura does a comedic Caribbean take on Synge’s “Playboy of the Western World” in “Playboy of the West Indies,” opening at West Coast Ensemble.

May 29: At Highways, New York “talking dancer” Celeste Miller presents the West Coast premiere of “Vision on 66,” a solo theatrical trip down the legendary Route 66.

May 29: D.C. Douglas’ “Artistry of Hell,” the odyssey of Zada Vein, a psychic stripper and Alice Cooper wanna-be, comes to Hollywood’s Harman Avenue Theatre.