Actors bare all in Theater Artists Olympia production of ‘The Credeaux Canvas’

Theater Artists Olympia isn’t being shy about the fact that its latest production includes a 22-minute scene during which two characters — one a man, one a woman — are nude.

The poster for the show, Keith Bunin’s “The Credeaux Canvas,” shows actress Alayna Chamberland, naked and artfully posed. “Come see the naked truth,” is printed on the poster, as is a warning that the show contains nudity.

All that aside, there’s no intention to titillate, and the play — about three young people who decide that art forgery is their ticket to a comfortable lifestyle — exposes all of its actors in a way that’s much more than physical.

“Every character in the show is naked for two hours straight,” said director Christian Carvajal. “It’s not a carefully composed piece that is trying to manipulate you. It’s four people living through something, and we’re inviting you to live through it with them.”

He’s speaking metaphorically, of course.

The scene everyone will be waiting for comes when Chamberland’s Amelia is posing and artist Winston (Christopher Rocco) gets the mistaken impression that she’d be more comfortable if he were naked, too.

The play’s other characters, who remain clothed, are Jamie (Mark Alford), who hatches the scheme to forge a painting by (fictional) artist Jean-Paul Credeaux, and Tess (Amanda Stevens, Carvajal’s wife), the art collector Jamie and Winston hope to fool.

But the director’s aim is that the actors’ emotions will be laid bare. He asked the cast to use an acting technique developed by Stanford Meisner that asks the actors to inhabit their characters and then simply respond to one another naturally.

The late Meisner described the work of an actor as living truthfully under imaginary circumstances.

Or as Rocco put it, “We’ve developed the foundations of who this person is, and then we basically just put that character in a sandbox with the other characters and see how these people play off each other.”

The idea is that the actors will be not so much acting as feeling what their characters feel.

“We want the audience to feel like they’re eavesdropping on private conversations,” Carvajal said. “These people are living their lives, and we happen to be in the room.”

And he expects the nakedness to help to create a bond between actors and audience. “It’s easier to fall in love with people when you’ve seen them bare.”

And these characters — undressed or not — have a lot to reveal.

“All of the characters come to major realizations about who they are and what they’ve been doing with their lives and the choices they’ve made and where that’s brought them,” Rocco said. “They have to come to grips with some very hard truths. It leaves them very vulnerable, and it requires a lot of the actors to put ourselves in that position.”

“It’s a play with a lot of high highs and low lows,” Carvajal said. “There’s something about the script that provokes a physical response.

“It got to me emotionally and physically. When it wanted me to laugh, I laughed, and it when it wanted me to cry, I cried.”

Indeed, he fell for the play sight unseen. He heard an audio production done by L.A. Theatre Works, and he knew he wanted to direct it. It took him four years to find a company ready and willing to tackle the required nudity.

“This has been my passion project since I first heard it,” he said.

This story was originally published March 23, 2016 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Actors bare all in Theater Artists Olympia production of ‘The Credeaux Canvas’."