\u201cI thought: What can I bring to the conversation that AI can\u2019t?\u201d Redmond says. \u201cAnd then it came to me: a body!\u201d<\/p>\n
She felt compelled to create an in-person experience that was distinctly human \u2014 something true and personal \u2014 the antithesis of the digitally-saturated, fragmented and ephemeral world we live in, where truth is often opaque. Though she had zero theatrical experience, not even in a high school musical, theater is what came to mind. <\/p>\n
\u201cI decided I wanted to tell the story of my life, as told by my body. That\u2019s how I came up with a one-woman show, \u2018Old Woman Naked.\u2019\u201d <\/a> <\/p>\n Pamela Redmond, right, chats with Los Angeles Times writer Deborah Vankin about her solo show, \u201cOld Woman Naked.\u201d<\/p>\n Telling me this, Redmond is sitting in a hot tub, nude, at Wi Spa <\/a>in Koreatown. As am I. Because interviewing Redmond \u2014 naked in an intimate setting \u2014 seemed the best way to have a personal conversation about such a revealing topic. We\u2019ve been friends for several years and it made sense to visit the Korean spa, at which we both feel comfortable.<\/p>\n Redmond sinks deeper into the steaming bath, the water level rising to her decolletage, leaving her face flushed as beads of sweat drip down the curve of her neck.<\/p>\n \u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d is about Redmond, but it\u2019s also about being in a woman\u2019s body, in America, at a certain time \u2014 from the pre-internet, \u201850s and \u201860s until today. Redmond performed it for one night only in New York City at the Laurie Beechman Theatre<\/a> in October, directed and produced by Janice Maffei <\/a>\u2014 just 10 weeks after she had conceived of it. The show opens April 29 in Los Angeles at the Broadwater<\/a> in Hollywood for three nights, directed by Jennifer Chambers<\/a> (\u201cPOTUS\u201d). Kate Juergens<\/a> and Jenn Gerstenblatt<\/a>, both formerly of ABC Family, produced it.<\/p>\n In the hour-long performance, Redmond stands on a bare stage and tells intimate stories she hasn\u2019t shared with anyone until now, not even her former husband of 33 years, her three children or her best girlfriends. She tells of her first stirrings of lust while she was growing up in Norwood, N.J., sparked by the desire to touch her best girlfriend\u2019s breasts; she tells of being a 19-year-old child bride and how her new father-in-law took her to a strip club shortly after the wedding; she tells of her jealous first husband who, when she tried to leave him, held a knife to her throat and tried to rape her. <\/p>\n But she also tells of the thrill, and all-consuming love, tangled up in having children; of creative reinvention and late-life success publishing a novel<\/a> at 50, creating an internet company<\/a> at 55 and selling a book<\/a> as a TV show at 60; and of the absolute freedom she felt after menopause, when she could no longer have children and her body, at long last, belonged only to her. <\/p>\n Pamela Redmond performs \u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d in New York in October 2025. (Scott Hoffmann)<\/p>\n As Redmond performs these stories during the show, she takes off her clothing, piece by piece, often cleverly stitched into the storytelling. At 11 years old, she explains onstage, she was desperate to wear a bra. \u201cNow I feel like I\u2019m 11, but with a drawer full of bras I never want to wear,\u201d she reveals, letting the undergarment drop to the ground. By the end of the show, Redmond is facing the audience entirely naked.<\/p>\n Ultimately, that moment is the point of the show: proudly bringing an image that\u2019s been culturally steeped in taboo and shame \u2014 that of an older woman\u2019s bare body, with all its folds and dimples and curves \u2014 into the light.<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to show people what an older woman\u2019s body actually looked like,\u201d Redmond says. \u201cYoung women take their clothes off all the time, they\u2019re scantily dressed onstage or using their body and their sexuality as part of their art. But older women \u2014 it\u2019s just not seen. Or it\u2019s seen as ugly. I knew right away: This is intrinsically different and kind of radical.\u201d <\/p>\n Even as she was researching the show, Redmond became increasingly aware of the extent to which older women\u2019s nude bodies \u201chave been so hidden away.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is so little art, so little pop culture [showing it],\u201d she says. \u201cI went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art<\/a> in New York, the fourth-largest museum in the world, and searched their archives and there are six images from all of history. In the Louvre<\/a> [in Paris], there are three drawings that show old women naked \u2014 and they\u2019re grotesque. Representation is really important. It matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Pamela Redmond, right, tells Times writer Deborah Vankin that she felt \u201con fire\u201d writing her solo show. \u201cI wanted to show people what an older woman\u2019s body actually looked like.\u201d<\/p>\n Redmond says she wasn\u2019t nervous about being nude in front of a live audience. \u201cI\u2019ve been through so many things in my life that have been kind of harrowing,\u201d she says. \u201cI was scared about not remembering my lines. That terrified me!\u201d But Redmond doesn\u2019t consider herself an exhibitionist, either. She\u2019s had a love-hate relationship with her body throughout her lifetime, she says. \u201cYou know, gaining and losing the same 40 pounds over and over.\u201d<\/p>\n At one moment in the show, Redmond shows an overhead slide of herself at 22, posing for an artist friend, nude. She looks up at the image, admitting: \u201cLook at me, I was a goddess. I had no idea. I thought I was fat, unfashionably curvy and unattractive.\u201d<\/p>\n If there is a message to the show, Redmond says, it\u2019s that \u201cyou are the sum of everything you\u2019ve been and everything you\u2019ve done. And to see yourself not just as this old body but as someone who\u2019s lived this incredibly rich life in this body that has taken you through this incredible range of experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d hit a nerve that night in New York, Redmond says. Audience members \u2014 mostly women, older and younger \u2014 came up to her afterward and revealed personal stories they hadn\u2019t told anyone to date. Other women said they were inspired by the play or felt they\u2019d been given newfound freedom to be themselves.<\/p>\n Redmond has since fleshed out the Los Angeles version of the show, going deeper into stories and punching up the jokes. <\/p>\n She also sees \u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d as a much bigger creative gesture than a limited run solo show. She hopes to write a book expanding on the ideas in the show and, separately, self-publish the script to sell in the theater lobby, afterward. She\u2019s thinking about a titular podcast, in which she\u2019d interview women of different ages about their bodies and their lives. And she\u2019s working with a theater director to develop the script of \u201cOld Woman Naked\u201d for a celebrity to star in. <\/p>\n Pamela Redmond, left, relaxes with Times writer Deborah Vankin at Wi Spa in Koreatown.<\/p>\n![\"Two](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1777298053_84_.jpeg\")
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