LUMA Theater, in Cincinnati for performances at 7 tonight and 2 p.m. Saturday in the Aronoff Center for the Arts' Jarson-Kaplan Theater, downtown, will bring an amazingly surreal spectrum of light experiences to life.

"It's definitely a visual 'wow' experience," said Marlin , the show's creator, one that to a certain extent is indescribable with words, he said. The audience "is seeing things they've never seen before...that's kind of a tall order these days."

Marlin, who has been touring his LUMA show since 1999, has a varied background in the performance arts, juggling his way from the circus to street performances and touring with a belly dance troupe to performing on the '70s show, "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert." His big break as a juggler never came, however, and eventually he felt burned out by his non-progressing career and chucked it all, moving to Hawaii to live "off-the-grid" in a treehouse of his own design.

It was there that he had an epiphany about the ubiquitous, powerful draw of light to all creatures, thanks to the glow of volcanic flow at night and the unimpeded light from stars.

"There are not too many places left where you can get a (completely) dark sky," he explained. "I started playing with light in the '80s because of my fascination with astronomy.

"Everyone has some memory of playing with light," he said, such as sparklers or flashlights, "and that fascination never goes away.

"The fireworks industry is a multi-gazillion dollar industry," he added, "and people love looking at Christmas lights.

"My hypothesis is that all life is drawn to light," he said, naming such examples as a deer frozen by a car's headlights and a child staring at candles on a birthday cake.

"LUMA takes that fascination and extrapolates it into a full evening's experience."

That experience "will be a very intimate experience for people, up close and personal," Marlin said, because the Jarson-Kaplan Theater is a 437-seat venue.

"The theater goes to black," he said of the start of the show. "The dark is my canvas.

"We create a 'lumen being,' a character that provides a thread that ties the show together. The work has a rising and falling quality, like a good roller coaster," he said - alternating between soft, intimate moments and big, raucous ones.

It's intricately choreographed to an original score by Michael Rapp. "He's a brilliant composer, and the music and the choreography are set together so that when the audience sees it, it all fits."

The movements involved in painting his three-dimensional light portrait encompass a variety of physical disciplines, from juggling and acrobatics to puppetry, and they're blended with a variety of lighting elements, from LED to electro and chemical luminescences, Marlin explained. "There are a lot of 'essences' - that's the way they describe light." And, because the technology keeps advancing, "the show has changed as technology changes."

Unlike a magic show, which engages people's left-brain, "trying to figure it out" side, the LUMA show is more of a right-brain experience, Marlin said, where people just immerse themselves in the enjoyment of the event without trying to figure out how it's done.

"One of the things that people don't get is what the performers have to go through to produce the images they're seeing," he explained, because for the most part they're not visible. "Every once in awhile, you get a glimpse, a shadow or silhouette... one of the things people find astonishing that people are doing it, it's not projected.

"This is a show about light, a three-dimensional experience that even breaks the fourth wall," he added, with an audience participation segment that's "quite stunning." When asked how many people it takes to perform the show, he replied, "That will remain a secret until the end of the show. It's never what people think; it's a much smaller number."

The "techno-circus" images run the gamut from naturally occurring light phenomena - fireflies, shooting stars, the Aurora Borealis - to such man-made, artificial light creations as fireworks, carnival rides, EKG monitors and screen savers.

Because "luminism is a new art form," Marlin said, "it's hard for people to imagine it," which is why he recommends that people visit his Web site for a visual demonstration (www.lumatheater.com). It's a brief, splashy appetizer of streaks, fireworks, light shapes, juggled and whirling images, sparks and pulsations that hint at the visual feast to come. (With a caveat about the limitations of a computer screen, which flattens the experience, "like listening to a violin on a transistor radio," Marlin said.)

"That's going to make them go, 'I get it,' " he said.

LUMA Theater "is a work that really does appeal to all ages, the same way that fireworks do," Marlin said. "There's so little entertainment that really does get everybody," he added, while explaining that the perceptions and reactions will vary according to age. Using the example of a book on a table, he pointed out that an infant sees an object, a child knows that object is a book, an older child may be able to read the words in that book and an adult will understand the philosophical treatise presented by those words.

As for reactions, "Children are much more vocal, they squeal with glee," he said, while adults - "we're squealing on the inside, but that doesn't mean that the response isn't there."

Although light "is a universal constant," Marlin said, he has noticed cultural differences in the way people respond to LUMA Theater.

"People in India had a very different response (from those) in America."

The show has been presented around the world, from India to and Scotland to Venezuela, and in more than 40 states.

"People in California were very keyed into it, I think because that was where the psychedelic movement came from."

He's also discovered that "this work can be seen by blind people. Very few blind people see no light, and because of the high contrast they're able to make out colors and shapes."