It's been running since Jan. 5, but the Off-Broadway show, Jodie's Body, only recently added some name players behind the scenes, including director Kenneth Elliott and set designer B.T. Whitehill. A one-woman performance, done mostly in the nude Jodie's Body stars Aviva Jane Carlin. The Uganda-born, Kenya-raised Carlin stars as Jodie, an overweight artist's model posing nude for a London art class three days after the first elections in South Africa. Part of that country's white upper class, Jodie muses about political issues. According to a statement, she realizes that "if the mighty structure which upheld apartheid could be dismantled, why should we not also take apart the one which governs our image of our physical selves?" Says spokesperson Alice Herrick, the play asks, "Who decides what is the perfect body? Why can't we get away from these whole fashion-magazine notions?"

With the addition of longtime Charles Busch associate Elliott and designer Whitehill (they both worked on Swingtime Canteen and The Lady in Question), Jodie's Body will now have an official opening date, May 4, with previews of the newly reconfigured show beginning Apr. 24.

Carlin's look at geographical and gender politics first played at Seattle, WA's Brown Bag Theatre in 1995 and later opened the Watermark Theatre's Word Fire Festival in NYC. This mounting is produced by the New Mercury Players.

For tickets ($18) and information on Jodie's Body in an open run at the Gene Frankel Theatre, 24 Bond St., call (212) 269-4200.

-- By David Lefkowitz