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.