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.