Eureka!

The Living Canvas: Eureka has something for every taste—serene solo pieces, whimsical action sequences, haunting operatic arias, sensual dances, and light-hearted segments that are just plain fun. The overarching theme of this year’s Living Canvas show is the notion of discovery, and the audience will be challenged to look for the connections as they witness this wide variety of performance pieces. Eureka is fun, serious, evocative, and sensual. Above all, it is a celebration of the beauty of the human body, and it is a mesmerizing experience to watch the nude performers move gracefully through projected patterns and textures as they work around the stage just a few feet from members of the audience.

Every year, Pete Guither and his talented production team come up with new innovations that take the Living Canvas concept to new artistic and technological levels. In the early years, banks of slide projectors with faders filled the stage with colorful images. This technology eventually gave way to more versatile LCD projectors mounted at the back of the theater and in the lighting grid above the heads of the performers. LCD projectors are still being used this year to fill the stage with colorful patterns and textures, but with an exciting new dimension—small hand-held units that allow the performers to bring the light right down to the stage within a few feet of the action. The result is incredible since this innovation gives Guither the ability to bring his projections to places in the performing space that could not have been lit with the stationary projection units.

It is an amazing experience to watch a Living Canvas rehearsal. The ensemble has only been rehearsing together for a few weeks, but to see them work together so smoothly, it would be easy to assume that they had been together for a much longer period of time. The entire cast is actively involved in all phases of the production and they freely offer suggestions about the concepts underlying each of the performance pieces, the choreography of the dance movements, and the projected images that work best in each segment of the show. Each performer has many responsibilities, but when new tasks or challenges arise, ensemble members generously offer to help. For many of the members of the cast, this is the first time they have ever performed nude on stage, but their poise, confidence, and enthusiasm remind us all that it is natural and empowering to celebrate the beauty of the human body.

Audience participation has always been an important element of each Living Canvas performance, and this year the popular segment has been slotted in the middle of the show rather than at the end where it has been many times in past years. The segment involves a routine that is best done with many participants, and any intrepid members of the audience who might want to try the Living Canvas experience are invited to shed their clothes at this point in the show and join the cast onstage as they watch the beautiful colorful projections play on their bodies. The new National Pastime stage is larger than the stage used in past years, so there is plenty of room for volunteers!

The Living Canvas: Eureka opens at 10:00 pm on Friday, June 29, and will run until August 11. It’s an outstanding show with a group of very talented performers who will amaze you with their originality, energy, and grace. Individual tickets for this show are available at the Brown Paper Tickets site, but if you plan to see all of the shows in the Naked July festival this summer, you will save money by purchasing a Festival Pass that will admit you to all of the shows and other special events that are scheduled. The fun starts on Friday—see you at the National Pastime Theater.

It's Getting Hot at the National Pastime Theater

All of the shows to be featured at the upcoming Naked July festival are in their final week of rehearsal, and once again, Keely Haddad-Null has done a masterful job of crafting a play for the festival that is mystical, sensual, and thought-provoking. She is the director of Jose Rivera’s References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, and she has challenged her actors to look deep into their own experiences to dredge up the passions and the hostilities that fuel Rivera’s story.

When she was recently asked why she felt that the play by Jose Rivera was a fitting selection as the headline show for Naked July, Haddad-Null offered this explanation: “Naked July: Art Stripped Down is a festival that celebrates the naked body as natural, beautiful, and true. Strip away the layers of clothing - items that appear to indicate a person's culture, values, or style--and you discover a human being--nothing more, nothing less. References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot centers on this search for truth. The story revolves around a series of events that occur over and over again. Gabriela awaits her husband's return home from the war. Benito enters and the husband and wife attempt to reunite, but small everyday occurrences keep pushing them apart. The cycle of fights to the death, hot sweaty sex, and search for the primary and real love continue.” 

Since Jose Rivera’s play is filled with dreamlike and surreal elements that set it apart from more traditional plays, Keely Haddad-Null reflected on some of the biggest challenges in capturing the full power of Rivera’s language and vision to maximize the magical experience for the audience. “Of course there are technical challenges to creating a magical world in which the moon plays a violin, a cat and coyote discuss their fears and desires, and a refrigerator rains sand. Still the biggest challenge is taking a surreal world and putting it into a concrete world that everyone understands. Each individual has a different idea of what a 'surreal' or 'dreamlike' world looks like, sounds like, or smells like. Creating this world in theater, which is by necessity a collaborative process, requires everyone to have a strong foothold in the tangible elements of this world in order for it to become a cohesive unit as opposed to a jumbled mess of ideas. This has forced our team - both cast and crew - to work in tandem and, as a pleasant side effect, this has brought everyone involved closer together.”

Michael O’Toole sits perched atop an old refrigerator through much of the play and offers his observations of life and love as the Moon when he is not playing his violin. Alison Chemers and Cameron Peart are the Cat and the Coyote, strutting the stage with only body paint covering their nude bodies--a fitting way to suggest their animal identities. The real heat is generated by Gabriela and Benito, the main characters played by Virginia Marie and Ernesto Melchor, Jr. Their dreams and disappointments are played our before our eyes as well as those of an oversexed neighbor boy (played by Nelson Rodriquez) who wants nothing more than to lose his virginity to the woman who occupies his thoughts and dreams.

This is an extremely entertaining production that works well as the foundation show for Naked July 2012. References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot opens at 8:00 pm on Friday, June 29, and Individual tickets for the show as well as Festival Passes good for all of the Naked July shows and special events this summer are available online at the secure Brown Paper Ticket site. Experience the passion and the sensuality at Naked July 2012.

Cameron Peart (center) gives some fighting tips to Virginia Marie and Ernesto Melchor, Jr, during a recent rehearsal.

Naked July Preview Night on June 23!

If you are among the many people who are anxiously awaiting the 2012 edition of the Naked July Festival, the artistic team at the National Pastime Theater has the perfect solution for you—a special “sneak peek” night featuring short segments from all of the shows that will be included in the Naked July 2012 celebration. This preview has become a much anticipated event each year since it allows audience members to get a first look at each of the shows, meet with the performers and directors, enjoy live music, and view the gallery of artwork on display in the theater lobby. It’s also a great opportunity to get a look at the great new performance space in the Preston Bradley Building on Lawrence Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood. Credit goes to Warren Winter/PSG for the photo of the new performing space shown here.

The Preview Night festivities begin at 8:00 pm on Saturday, June 23, and admission is free for people who have purchased a Naked July Festival Pass. A Festival Pass is a great value for people who plan to attend all of the shows this summer since it includes a ticket to each of the featured shows as well as special events that are scheduled throughout the run of the festival. If you have not yet purchased a Festival Pass, just click this link to go to the Brown Paper Ticket secure online ticket site:

Individual tickets for the Preview Night may be purchased at the door on the night of the event for $10.

If you have not attended Naked July events in past years, you should mark this event on your calendar and join the celebration. Naked July is about celebrating the beauty of the human body, and what makes this festival special is that there are many opportunities for audience members to get in the spirit and participate. In this sense, Naked July is a perfect manifestation of the self-stated vision of this bold theater company—“National Pastime Theater ensemble has the courage and the artistic vision. We are a company with a new reason for theater: setting to rights the jaded viewpoints of generations weaned on passive entertainment forms. No other theater in Chicago can offer such fearless exploitation of your senses. Where else but the National Pastime Theater lives the promise of the impossible?”

The clothes start coming off on June 23 and the celebration lasts until the beginning of August. Don’t miss the fun!

Richmond Jim--A Classic is Revived

One of the real benefits of attending the Naked July Festival hosted by the National Pastime Theater each summer is the opportunity to see bold and thought-provoking performances that are not likely to be staged in other venues around the city. Some shows get their premiere staging at NPT during the month-long Naked July festival, while others, such as the classic play by Cal Yeomans titled Richmond Jim, are revived after a long absence to entertain and challenge new audiences. Richmond Jim is directed by David Zak and is produced by Pride Films and Plays as part of the 2012 Naked July schedule.

Richmond Jim was the first successful play by Cal Yeomans. It premiered in San Francisco at the newly formed Theatre Rhinoceros and was selected as the Best Gay Play of the Year in 1979. Yeomans wrote several other plays over the next few years, but then turned his attention to poetry and photography in the mid-1980’s and specialized in creating artistic male nude images.  When a curator prepared an exhibition of some of his photography and lauded him for his groundbreaking plays, Yeomans replied that "my pictures say it better than my words ever did." Looking back, it is clear that his words and his images opened new frontiers for a generation of creative artists to follow.

Richmond Jim provides a compelling look into the gay community before the AIDS epidemic changed the landscape forever. PFP's Executive Director David Zak explains the project like this—“As we explore our mission to develop 'what's new and who's next' in LGBT plays and screenplays, we have also had the chance to explore important writing that has come before. When I first read Richmond Jim, I felt strongly that this play - which is a wonderful reflection of gay life before AIDS - would touch those who lived through this period, and teach those who have been born since."

The production includes performances by Kris Hyland (Jim), Jamie Smith (Biddy), and Chris Kossen (Mike). The Friday and Saturday performances start at midnight, but shows are scheduled for 8:00 pm during weekdays and at 6:00 pm for some special Sunday performances. More information about the Pride Films and Plays project can be found on their website. Thanks to David Zak for providing the photos used in this article.

Collaboration and Discovery

We have all experienced “eureka” moments at times in our lives when the figurative light bulb comes on in our heads and we grasp solutions or gain new insights to the mysteries in our lives. It is this spirit of self-discovery and epiphany that supplies both the title and the central theme of the 2012 Living Canvas show at the National Pastime Theater. Eureka will amaze audience members as they watch the talented cast of fifteen nude performers move across the stage bathed in colorful projected patterns and textures, and it will invite viewers to experience the liberating sensation of self-discovery for themselves at one point in the performance.

In one sense, Eureka takes the Living Canvas ensemble back to its formative roots. When Pete Guither staged his premiere Chicago performance of the Living Canvas on the Strawdog Theater stage back in the summer of 2001, the concept consisted of a series of short and visually compelling performance pieces. As the project evolved over the years, shorter vignettes gave way to full unified stories such as those told in the more recent memorable performances of Rain, Demons, and Nocturne. This year, the artistic team and the talented cast of performers have chosen to create a variety of individual pieces that will allow them to focus on those powerful moments of self-discovery that help to define and enrich our lives. Some of the segments will be solo performances or showcase the talents of a small group of performers while others will feature the full cast filling the entire performance space.

The notion of full collaboration has always been at the core of the Living Canvas concept, and the ability of the performers to work together creatively is a key consideration during the audition process. That collective spirit of creativity and innovation is even more apparent in this year’s production since ensemble members are responsible for developing the concepts and working with other ensemble members to bring their visions to the stage. Meagan Piccochi (pictured below leading a recent rehearsal) is working as a choreographer for the show, and she is joined by other members of the artistic team that includes Pete Guither, Adam Fox, Lisa Adams and Bill Daniel—all veterans of previous Living Canvas shows.

Since the new National Pastime Theater performing space is larger than the stage used for Naked July events in past years, the Eureka cast and artistic team have many new options as they develop both the dance moves and the projected light images to fill the space. As always, Pete Guither has promised some new technological innovations to make good use of the new performing space and to create the most powerful and memorable visual experience for the audience.

As noted above, each Living Canvas performance gives audience members an opportunity to experience the liberating sensation of shedding their clothes and discovering what it is like to be a “living canvas” as they move through a landscape of colorful projected patterns. The audience participation segment is completely voluntary, of course, but it is a unique chance to experience a marvelous “eureka” moment in the voyage of self-discovery.

You can use this link to read more about The Living Canvas or to see galleries of images from past performances. Eureka opens at 10:00 pm on June 29 and runs until August 11.

Surrealism and Sexual Desire

Picture a lonely and isolated woman living alone in a desolate desert region awaiting her husband’s return from a military deployment. Mix in the dreamlike musings of an all-seeing moon, a gentle house cat, a lustful coyote, an oversexed teenage neighbor, and a sexually frustrated husband who craves sex after months of abstinence, and you have the makings of an intensely heated drama. These are the essential ingredients of the play titled References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot, the headline show at the 2012 Naked July Festival at the National Pastime Theater.

Like the paintings of Salvador Dali, Jose Rivera’s play has a surreal quality. The dialogue is often dreamlike and poetic, and the suggestive language reveals the intense sexual yearnings that drive the actions of several of the characters who surround the woman named Gabriela who is more interested in emotional passion than physical pleasure. Rivera’s language is both intriguing and challenging, and the result is a theater experience that will cause audience members to examine their own views of personal relationships and sexual desires.

References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot opens at 8:00 pm on Friday, June 29, and will run until Saturday, August 11. Cast members include Virginia Marie (Gabriela), Ernesto Melchor Jr. (Benito), Michael O’Toole (Moon), Cameron Peart (Coyote), Alison Chemers (Cat), and Nelson Rodriguez (Martin). Under the direction of Keely Haddad-Null, this show mixes desires of the unconscious with the stark reality of alienation in a foreign desert and adds a thick layer of surrealist aesthetic to the naked body—qualities that are at the core of the Naked July concept. Don't miss this great show and all of the other performances and special events that are scheduled as part of Naked July 2012.