Naked and unafraid at 73, she's challenging ideas about aging women on a Hollywood stage - BERITAJA

Telling her life communicative — naked onstage — was the only way.

That much, Pamela Redmond was judge of.

It was a sweltering July day past twelvemonth and Redmond was sitting connected the sofa successful her Hollywood location stewing complete really AI was about putting her retired of business. At 72, she had published 20 books, 7 of them useful of fiction, and she’d moreover sold 1 novel, “Younger,” arsenic a deed tv series. She was the laminitis of the largest baby naming website online which, arsenic a azygous divorcee, was her lifeline financially (and meant to beryllium her retirement). But AI had scraped her website’s contented and utilized it to rank itself higher successful hunt results; her company’s gross had plummeted by about half and she’d had to fto labor go.

“I thought: What could I bring to the speech that AI can’t?” Redmond says. “And past it came to me: a body!”

She felt compelled to create an in-person acquisition that was distinctly human — thing existent and individual — the antithesis of the digitally-saturated, fragmented and ephemeral world we unrecorded in, wherever truth is often opaque. Though she had zero theatrical experience, not moreover successful a precocious schoolhouse musical, theatre is what came to mind.

“I decided I wanted to show the communicative of my life, arsenic told by my body. That’s really I came up pinch a one-woman show, ‘Old Woman Naked.’”

Pamela Redmond, right, chats pinch Los Angeles Times writer Deborah Vankin about her solo show, “Old Woman Naked.”

Telling maine this, Redmond is sitting successful a basking tub, nude, astatine Wi Spa in Koreatown. As americium I. Because interviewing Redmond — naked successful an friendly mounting — seemed the champion measurement to person a individual speech about specified a revealing topic. We’ve been friends for respective years and it made consciousness to sojourn the Korean spa, astatine which we some consciousness comfortable.

Redmond sinks deeper into the steaming bath, the h2o level rising to her decolletage, leaving her look flushed arsenic beads of sweat drip down the curve of her neck.

“Old Woman Naked” is about Redmond, but it’s besides about being successful a woman’s body, successful America, astatine a definite clip — from the pre-internet, ‘50s and ‘60s until today. Redmond performed it for 1 nighttime only successful New York City astatine the Laurie Beechman Theatre successful October, directed and produced by Janice Maffei — conscionable 10 weeks aft she had conceived of it. The show opens April 29 successful Los Angeles astatine the Broadwater successful Hollywood for 3 nights, directed by Jennifer Chambers (“POTUS”). Kate Juergens and Jenn Gerstenblatt, some formerly of ABC Family, produced it.

In the hour-long performance, Redmond stands connected a bare shape and tells friendly stories she hasn’t shared pinch anyone until now, not moreover her erstwhile hubby of 33 years, her 3 children aliases her champion girlfriends. She tells of her first stirrings of lust while she was increasing up successful Norwood, N.J., sparked by the desire to touch her champion girlfriend’s breasts; she tells of being a 19-year-old kid bride and really her caller father-in-law took her to a portion nine soon aft the wedding; she tells of her suspicious first hubby who, erstwhile she tried to time off him, held a weapon to her pharynx and tried to rape her.

But she besides tells of the thrill, and all-consuming love, tangled up successful having children; of imaginative reinvention and late-life occurrence publishing a novel astatine 50, creating an internet company astatine 55 and selling a book arsenic a TV show astatine 60; and of the absolute state she felt aft menopause, erstwhile she could nary longer person children and her body, astatine agelong last, belonged only to her.

Pamela Redmond performs “Old Woman Naked” successful New York successful October 2025. (Scott Hoffmann)

As Redmond performs these stories during the show, she takes disconnected her clothing, portion by piece, often cleverly stitched into the storytelling. At 11 years old, she explains onstage, she was hopeless to deterioration a bra. “Now I consciousness for illustration I’m 11, but pinch a drawer afloat of bras I ne'er want to wear,” she reveals, letting the undergarment driblet to the ground. By the extremity of the show, Redmond is facing the assemblage wholly naked.

Ultimately, that infinitesimal is the constituent of the show: proudly bringing an image that’s been culturally steeped successful taboo and shame — that of an older woman’s bare body, pinch each its folds and dimples and curves — into the light.

“I wanted to show group what an older woman’s assemblage really looked like,” Redmond says. “Young women return their apparel disconnected each the time, they’re scantily dressed onstage aliases utilizing their assemblage and their sexuality arsenic portion of their art. But older women — it’s conscionable not seen. Or it’s seen arsenic ugly. I knew correct away: This is intrinsically different and benignant of radical.”

Even arsenic she was researching the show, Redmond became progressively alert of the grade to which older women’s nude bodies “have been truthful hidden away.”

“There is truthful small art, truthful small popular civilization [showing it],” she says. “I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art successful New York, the fourth-largest depository successful the world, and searched their archives and location are six images from each of history. In the Louvre [in Paris], location are 3 drawings that show aged women naked — and they’re grotesque. Representation is really important. It matters.”

Pamela Redmond, right, tells Times writer Deborah Vankin that she felt “on fire” penning her solo show. “I wanted to show group what an older woman’s assemblage really looked like.”

Redmond says she wasn’t tense about being nude successful beforehand of a unrecorded audience. “I’ve been done truthful galore things successful my life that person been benignant of harrowing,” she says. “I was frightened about not remembering my lines. That terrified me!” But Redmond doesn’t see herself an exhibitionist, either. She’s had a love-hate narration pinch her assemblage passim her lifetime, she says. “You know, gaining and losing the aforesaid 40 pounds complete and over.”

At 1 infinitesimal successful the show, Redmond shows an overhead descent of herself astatine 22, posing for an creator friend, nude. She looks up astatine the image, admitting: “Look astatine me, I was a goddess. I had nary idea. I thought I was fat, unfashionably curvy and unattractive.”

If location is simply a connection to the show, Redmond says, it’s that “you are the sum of everything you’ve been and everything you’ve done. And to spot yourself not conscionable arsenic this aged assemblage but arsenic personification who’s lived this incredibly rich | life successful this assemblage that has taken you done this unthinkable scope of experiences.”

“Old Woman Naked” deed a nervus that nighttime successful New York, Redmond says. Audience members — mostly women, older and younger — came up to her afterward and revealed individual stories they hadn’t told anyone to date. Other women said they were inspired by the play aliases felt they’d been fixed newfound state to beryllium themselves.

Redmond has since fleshed retired the Los Angeles type of the show, going deeper into stories and punching up the jokes.

She besides sees “Old Woman Naked” arsenic a overmuch bigger imaginative motion than a constricted tally solo show. She hopes to constitute a book expanding connected the ideas successful the show and, separately, self-publish the book to waste successful the theatre lobby, afterward. She’s reasoning about a titular podcast, successful which she’d question and reply women of different ages about their bodies and their lives. And she’s moving pinch a theatre head to create the book of “Old Woman Naked” for a personage to prima in.

Pamela Redmond, left, relaxes pinch Times writer Deborah Vankin astatine Wi Spa successful Koreatown.

“I spot it arsenic Jessica Lange connected Broadway,” Redmond says. “It’s for illustration stealth feminism: They travel for the nudity, they time off pinch their views of women’s bodies wholly revolutionized. I want this to beryllium a bigger speech about women, aging, bodies, humanity, owning our personality and characteristic — and celebrating that.”

So what does Redmond spot now, erstwhile she looks astatine her assemblage successful the mirror?

“I deliberation I look great. I for illustration what I see. I for illustration my smile,” she says. “I’m good.”

Stepping retired into the sunlit parking batch aft our spa day, that grin is connected afloat display.

“That was truthful fun,” Redmond says. “Our speech — everything we talked about — it’s different when you’re naked, it really is. You’re conscionable much open, much vulnerable.”

She takes a spot successful the shade, waiting for the valet to bring her car.

“It’s the aforesaid pinch the show, the speech I wanted to person pinch the audience. That’s why it had to be: ‘Old Woman Naked.’”

“Old Woman Naked” plays astatine the Broadwater, successful Hollywood, April 29-30 and May 17. Tickets: $35.