Shower curtain call
Artist’s ‘show’ in NYC bathtubs
Rub-a-dub-dub, this artist wants to soak in your tub.
Siobhan O’Loughlin, 29, is doing a steamy one-woman show in bathtubs across Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens while wearing nothing but bubbles. She’ll even ask you to shampoo her hair or scrub her back.
“Broken Bone Bathtub” is based on the Brooklyn performance artist’s quest to find places to wash after breaking her hand in a 2014 bike accident.
“I was afraid a shower would get my cast wet, so when people asked how they could help, I said, ‘Well, do you have a bathtub?’ ” laughed O’Loughlin, whose Bushwick loft has only a shower. “I was taking baths all over New York City.”
The Towson University acting grad staged her first show in Tokyo, with Japanese subtitles projected on the bathroom tiles.
O’Loughlin had faucet fright at first.
“I was sitting naked in a bathtub waiting for a bunch of strangers to come watch me and was like ‘What am I thinking? This is the worst idea ever!’ ” she said.
But her performance made quite the splash, and she has since brought her act to Baltimore, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Orlando, Fla., St. Louis, Australia, England, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
Each show is held in a different private bathroom and costs $35 a seat.
“The number of tickets we sell depends on how many people can fit in each bathroom,” said O’Loughlin, adding the crowd is usually five to 10 deep.
“A lot of people get tense and freaked out being in a tiny room with a naked person,” O’Loughlin said.
But the one-hour show “isn’t about sexuality, it’s about intimacy,” she said.
At her Friday night performance, tiny step stools and a toilet served as seats for the audience.
“Have you ever taken a platonic shower with anyone?” she asked onlookers from inside a baby blue Astoria tub. One audience member dished on a crazy encounter in college.
She continued asking more questions like, “What part of your body are you most embarrassed of?”
She opened up a dialogue about pain, vulnerability and healing.
“The show changes almost every time because the audience often dictates what we talk about,” she said.
“The physical proximity helps us break down the barriers of feeling uncomfortable,” the Maryland native added.
O’Loughlin then asked a woman to scrub her back with a bar of Soap Cherie and condition her hair as she spoke about struggling to recover from her injury.
As the bubbles dissipated, O’Loughlin announced: “All right, guys, the bubbles are disappearing. Hope we’re all right with that.”
The audience tittered as she curled her knees up to her chest.
Her last show will be Feb.25 at a secret location in Greenwich Village.