Luminous Emptiness, a Multimedia Production Illustrating The Tibetan Book
of the Dead, to be Performed at Naropa University 

BOULDER, Colo. (Sept. 11, 2009)–Naropa University is pleased to announce the upcoming performances of Luminous Emptiness, directed by International Butoh Artist Katsura Kan. The staged multimedia production, based on a 1975 translation of The Tibetan Book of the Dead by Naropa’s founder Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, is a co-production of the Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture, directed by Ken Green, and Naropa University's MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program, directed by Wendell Beavers.  

Public performances will be held on Friday through Sunday, Oct. 16-18 in the Performing Arts Center at the Naropa University, 2130 Arapahoe Ave., Boulder, Colo. 80302. For reservations and ticketing, contact  (303) 245-4798 or http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/79202. The cost is $15 general admission, $10 for students and seniors, and $5 for Naropa students, faculty, staff and alumni with ID.

Luminous Emptiness seeks to provide the audience with an immersive and captivating illustration of the journey from death to the intermediate state and on to rebirth, in accordance with the teachings of The Tibetan Book of The Dead, or Bardo Thodol in Tibetan. Also, the tale of how Luminous Emptiness came into being includes another journey—from ancient Tibetan history to the early years of Naropa, then to contemporary artists and the use of state-of-the-art technological tools.

Ken Green, who conceived and designed the overall project, is co-producing the performance with Naropa MFA Director Wendell Beavers. Green is currently the executive director of The Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture, a Boulder-based nonprofit cultural organization. He was a member of the original board of directors that founded Naropa in the 1970s and was a senior student of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

According to Green, The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a teaching by Padmasambhava, who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century. The text was recovered 600 years later by Karma Lingpa and was soon adopted throughout the region as one of the principal texts for giving aid and guidance to the dying. It was subsequently passed down through the Trungpa lineage, and in the late 1970s Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche asked Green to adapt the text for film and theater, so it would be accessible to the general public.

The 2009 project seeks to make an ancient and esoteric text exciting and accessible for modern audiences through the use of new media technology. To weave together Tibetan art and computer-generated images, the project team will be working with digital imagery and enhanced video tools, so it can composite, render and blend pictorial elements from Tibetan Thangka paintings with high-resolution video, CGI objects and algorithmic animation. The Bardo Thodol is a complex tract filled with visual and sonic imagery, and brilliant images, colors and sounds will be an integral part of the performance.

The current workshop performance is being crafted by a team of highly talented local and international artists and technical wizards, including composer Gary Grundei, new media artist and animator John Vega, video and media artist Kevin Anderson, and technology consultant Wyndham Hannaway. Master painter Romio Shrestha and his team of artisan monks have created postmodern versions of Tibetan Thangka art. Douglas Penick, a Boulder-based writer, librettist and scholar, wrote the text adaptation that is central to the upcoming performance.

Luminous Emptiness will be performed by members of the 2nd Year Ensemble of Naropa’s MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program, which is noted for its unique physical theater, music and dance cross-training. The program has produced notable public productions over the past four years, including works by Meredith Monk and last year’s extraordinary versions of Euripides’s Trojan Women and Thornton Wilder’s Our Town.

The director, Katsura Kan, is an internationally known artist in the Japanese discipline of Butoh, an avant-garde dance movement that began to develop after World War II in Japan. He has been a frequent contributor to Naropa’s MFA program.

Beavers said Butoh has its roots in ancient Japanese culture, but also has a connection to pre-war German expressionism and a powerful post-war avant-garde movement in Japan. He said Butoh is an appropriate form for a work that presents “a very full and deep expression of Buddhist cultural thought,” and added that Butoh’s movement style will help illustrate Bardo Thodol concepts such as impermanence, decay and a non-dualistic idea of life and death.

Green noted that the Tibetan title, Bardo Thodol, means “Great Liberation through Hearing.” “The entirety of the Bardo Thodol is grounded in the teaching that every single moment of life, death and transition contains the seed of complete and immediate enlightenment. Luminous Emptiness embodies the aspiration and prayer of Padmasambhava that all sentient beings realize the freedom and enlightenment that is already within them, and that can be awakened in all the phenomena of life and death. All adaptations of this text, including this one, are offered with this intent,” said Green.

Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian liberal arts institution dedicated to advancing contemplative education. This approach to learning integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions, helping students know themselves more deeply and engage constructively with others. The university comprises a four-year undergraduate college and graduate programs in the arts, education, environmental leadership, psychology and religious studies.

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