When was the last time you ran around naked, throwing paint? Odds are it’s been a while. But this year, in what has been dubbed the “messiest production on the fringe”, one show at the Edinburgh festival is championing the idea that perhaps we should all try it out some time.

Liberation, a performance by the Alchemist Theatre Company, will see five performers explore what it is like to break away from the restrictions and expectations of modern life and have a moment of liberation.

As the performance progresses, the actors will slowly lose their clothes until they are naked, throwing pots of paint at each other in a physical expression of their freedom. The paint is black, white and grey to begin with but gets more colourful as more clothes are stripped off.

“Especially in the British culture, you are always conditioned to be ashamed of yourself and be apologetic for being yourself,” said Luke Clarke, 25, the director of the show. “So this is just celebrating people’s individuality and making them think a little bit more about it. The hope is that they will watch the show and think: yes, I exist in an office situation but maybe I can find moments where I can express myself and be momentarily liberated from it all.”

Liberation at the Edinburgh fringe. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

The piece was first inspired by an encounter with artist Shoshana Stern, who developed a project where she got strangers who were uncomfortable with nudity in social situations to go into a room, take off their clothes and throw paint at each other as a way of liberating themselves.

Clarke and his co-founder of Alchemist Theatre, Anthony Stephen Springall, 26, decided they wanted to explore the oppressive nature of modern life further on stage, bringing it together with the work of philosopher Alan Watts.

Watts, said Clarke, had lectured in the 1970s about how we are all brought up to believe that, as we progress through the relentless system of school and work, we are working towards an end goal. However, we never quite reach it, ensuring by the end of our lives we feel cheated.

The only words in the piece are taken verbatim from one of Watts’s lectures, with the show’s narrative built up through live music, dance and mime.

“The show is about looking at that idea and trying to find moments of liberation from that structure that we all exist in, and those moments are expressed by the nudity and the paint,” said Clarke. “I think it is very important to celebrate these moments of liberation – it is very rare to be able to get away with them in our 9-5 mundane lives.”

As part of the workshop process for the production, all the actors took part in a method created by Stern, which involved them all standing in a circle with their eyes closed, stripping off, counting to five and then all opening their eyes at the same time. Those second before they all opened their eyes were “genuinely terrifying” said Clarke, but as soon as everyone was together in the room naked it became completely normal.

“We now forget every night how shocking it is for audiences for people to walk confidently onto a stage naked and throw paint at each other,” said Clarke. “What’s interesting is that it takes the audience about five minutes to get into it and then it just becomes completely normal. It’s challenging their perceptions of nudity and how we’re meant to feel about our bodies that’s been most interesting.”

Both Clarke and Springall said putting on the show has also made them aware about how people’s reluctance to “let go” or even witness others letting go, was tied up in society’s complex relationship with our bodies and how other people perceive them.

“It’s all about social conditioning, isn’t it?” he said. “We are all taught to think that the naked body is either something to be ashamed of, or can only be used in a sexual context, and the way women portray women, and how they are depicted in films and photos is that you have to be thin and beautiful to feel confident about yourself when that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’m not the biggest fan of my own body but doing this show just made me realise that no one actually cares.”

Liberation at Edinburgh fringe. Photograph: Murdo Macleod

The show is not alone at Edinburgh in exploring our relationship with naked bodies. The Naked Stand Up sees Miss Glory Pearl perform her routine naked as she explores the human body in the 21st century, while Adrienne Truscott, the comedian who made waves at the Fringe last year by telling rape jokes whilst wearing nothing on her bottom half, once again explores our uncomfortable relationship with nudity in her show.

Yet having a show where several tins of paint a night are thrown at people is not without its complications, admitted Springall.

“After the show finishes it’s a total nightmare each night,” he said with a laugh. “The paint always goes everywhere, so we are there frantically with mops, J-cloths, loo-roll, everything. And though the paint is washable, all of us are now permanently stained strange shades of green or blue or orange – my knees will never be white again.”

Clarke added: “We spend more time cleaning than we do performing the show.”