Hey, Watch the Suit!

Of all the ways to break through the fourth wall — look at the audience, talk to the audience, commiserate with the audience — we like the way the Primitive Screwheads do it: They pour blood on the audience. Not just a little blood, however, but geysering, pierced carotid-artery–style blood, which runs in the aisles after it is thrown on the patrons. Naturally, that sort of mise-en-scène requires an appropriate script, and the Screwheads came up with one called Brain-Dead Alive. Victor Hugo, it ain’t. But it is Peter Jackson, based on his Dead Alive film, which was released in New Zealand as Braindead. The troupe does all the requisite theatery stuff — acting, directing, hitting cues — but it’s really about the blood, especially since after a year of searching the troupe finally found a theater that would look the other way regarding wholesale massacre. The Web site states it simply enough: “Everyone will be soaked.”
June 19-20, 8 p.m.; June 26-27, 8 p.m., 2009