ACT OUT OPENING: 5th Annual Salon des Naked July: Art Stripped Down 2013

The National Pastime Theater Presents

Salon des Naked July: Art Stripped Down 2013

Fifth Annual Summer Festival

At The National Pastime Theater the entire month of July is filled with lovely, provoking and aggressive bodies. As the temperature rises, the clothing falls. The National Pastimes’ festival reveals the human body as beautiful in every shape, size and color. By exposing these physical differences, audiences discover the innate similarities in all human bodies. We are all made of the same material both natural and beautiful.

In our fifth annual Salon, Naked July: Art Stripped Down, NPT offers a series of shows and exhibitions. We offer multi-disciplinary pieces that explore the many aspects of beauty in art featuring the nude human body. There are Life Drawing Sessions, Aggressive Movement Theater and Dance, Audience Participatory workshops and classic Burlesque Big City Butterflies. The National Pastime Theater transforms our world into a human form art gallery for one month. Only at The National Pastime Theater.

June 28^th through July 27^th

Only at The National Pastime Theater

The 2013 line up includes:

Le Chat Noir, Gary Schirmer and Friends. Fridays at 8 p.m. - 9:30 p.m. 90 minutes

Urban Jungle, Vaudezilla. Fridays at 10 p.m. -11 p.m. 60 minutes

Kill Your Boyfriends, Pride Films and Plays. Begins Saturday July 5^th.Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays 3 p.m. and special performance Friday July 26 at Midnight. 70 minutes.

Naked People 2013 Gary Shirmer Figure Study Visual Art Opening Friday July 12 only, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. Free

The Living Canvas, Performance Saturdays 10 p.m. including post show discussion. 90 minutes. Workshop 10 a.m. – 1 p.m., lunch break 1 p.m. Workshop 2 p.m. – 5 p.m.

Tickets are $20.00 for each live performance and $10.00 each film screening per adventurous patron. Individual tickets are available for purchase at nakedjuly.com.  Discounted festival passes are available by calling the box office at 773-327-7077, group rates are also available.

The National Pastime Theater is located within the rediscovered historic Preston Bradley Center at 941 W Lawrence Ave. 4th Floor in Chicago. The curious and bold can discover us via the Red Line Lawrence train stop and bus routes 36, 81, 145 and 151 are all within 3 blocks. $5 parking in Weiss hospital parking at 4650 N. Clarendon. Voucher at box office.

For tickets go to nakedjuly.com (tickets on sale 6-11-13 p.m.)

Details:

 Le Chat Noir, Gary Schirmer and Friends. Fridays at 8 p.m. Hosted byNaked July Art Stripped Down’s long time Art Curator. (Live Nude Studies, Music, Salon, Naked July)

This is an interactive Toulouse-Lautrec inspired Salon with a figure drawing seminary, live music, audience participation if desired and an enjoyable safe atmosphere in our hidden away antique speakeasy theater. The atmosphere like no other place in the world. Figure study virtuoso Gary Schirmer will lead all who wish to improve or begin their figure study skills or still modeling skills. Anyone can play. You may also BYOB and walk about the room. Observe the studies and enjoy the atmosphere and music. All supplies will be included for those that wish to draw. “Like nothing you have ever seen.”  Guaranteed!

Urban Jungle, Vaudezilla. Fridays at 10 p.m. Vaudezilla is the Official Burlesque Troupe of Naked July: Art Stripped Down 2013. (Burlesque, Vaudeville, Performance Art, Naked July)

Join Vaudezilla as we take a walk on the wild side in our “Urban Jungle” cabaret, a fast-paced 60 minute show that lets us examine the hot, hot heat of the Windy City at night.  In this stunning combination of burlesque and performance art, we follow a variety of cabaret performers on a journey through missed connections, public transportation foibles, and what it’s like to be a starving artist in the big city.

Kill Your Boyfriends, Pride Films and Plays. Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 3 p.m. starting July 6^th, with a special midnight performance on July 26th. (July 06, through July 27 and Midnight July 26.) This is Pride Films and Plays second appearance at Naked July: Art Stripped Down. (Dance, Theater, Naked July)

Two couples in a single bed. Finding each relationship at a moment of strain, we watch as the characters try to make it through one more night, each unable to sleep, refusing to rest.  A fever dream of movement and text, the performance combines the words of several writers to voice the panic and obsession that threaten to consume.  Fear of sex.  Fear of death.  Fear of sleep and the fight against its tranquil oblivion.  You always hurt the one you love.  Or, at the very least, the one who sleeps next to you.  “You must kill your boyfriends”, poet Alex Dimitrov tells us. “You must kill what wants, like death, to keep you”.

Choreographed and Arranged by Derek Van Barham. Authors: Richard Siken, Alex Dimitrov, Sylvia Plath, Sharon Olds, Thom Gunn, Shakespeare, and Walt Whitman (among others).

The Living Canvas, Saturdays 10 p.m. The Living Canvas returns to Naked July: Art Stripped Down in 2013 with its freshest and most collaborative approach yet. (Movement, Dance, Theater, Workshop, Naked July)

A delightful mix of professional directing, performing, and writing joins up with startling new ideas developed in workshops with Living Canvas fans.  Patrons will have the opportunity to attend and participate in the workshops on the performance day and have input into that night's performance. Sign up for the workshops after purchasing tickets.

The Living Canvas celebrates the beauty and expressive power of the human form through performance art, nurturing a sense of body acceptance for performer and audience. It is spectacle and storytelling, utilizing creative lighting, sound, and multi-media imagery that interact with the human canvas.