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.