Come be captivated by a reading list celebrating all creatures and dedicated to the wild at heart kept in cages.

What is Naked Girls Reading?
Naked Girls Reading is a nude literary salon that takes place in twenty cities around the world and on five different continents. At each event, a small cast of beautiful women remove their clothing (yes, all of it) and read personal selections to an adoring audience. It is entertaining, magical, often funny, sometimes heart wrenching and really very sexy.

Are the girls really naked?
Yes, we are.

Is the audience naked?
No, they are not.

There’s something beautiful, something altogether more intimate, about a woman reading in the nude. It’s just that simple.

The Cape Town chapter of this international event has been described as a "performance art sensation" on eTV Primetime News and has been featured in The Sunday Times, Elle magazine and on Good Hope FM.

Audience Responses

Great show, gutsy girls!

Refreshing, honest, great stories & animated readings. Amandla!

We all felt disappointed. We weren't engaged by the readers and not entertained. We left in the intermission. I expected more.

Beautiful! Brave! Classy showcase! Loved every it of the experience. Cosy venue well suited❤️

This was my third time at a Naked Girls Reading event, and second one at Alexander Bar. Each time I attend one of these events, I am so struck by the safe, assured space that is created between the four women reading and the audience. Half of the audience, on average, I think, are regulars, and it helps the comfort and 'safe space' feel for the readers. There is always mutual respect and an acknowledgment of the readers' confidence, courage and the sense of sharing: both in the shedding of clothes as well as the choice of texts. Some texts, always, are harrowing, intensely emotional experiences and the atmosphere is crisped with how the reading of such a text ironically strips away the layers of the audience member sitting hidden in the dark while the words emanate from the mouth of an unclothed person. In that, in the text bonding the reader and the audience so profoundly in tragedy, pathos and laugh-out-loud silliness, I find art and vulnerability going hand in hand and the truth is, they always have gone hand in hand. Charlie French is the constant reader we come to know, and as she leads her fellow-readers, so she leads us, the audience. I am awed by her presence and her energy. One day, perhaps, I will be brave enough to write a story for Charlie to like enough to read at one of the events, given that I'm a writer. Lastly, and perhaps a very personal note: I was introduced to Naked Girls Reading by a partner. We are no longer together, and last night was the first time I'd gone to the event without her. It was crippling and lonely throughout, but the readers pulled me through with those incredibly swinging emotions coming from their texts but mediated by their voices. The big twist of Naked Girls Reading is that the fully-clothed ones often get comforted by those without clothes because, eventually, you forget about the nudity and you're lead the by the words, and the voices. It's a very profound experience and I vote Naked Girls Reading for president.