Streetcar Redux

Keeping Austin weird since 1995, the Texas theatrical collective Rude Mechanicals aims to create works that express “big ideas, cheap laughs, and dizzying spectacle.” To that end, it has challenged and revised sacred cultural cows such as The Decameron, Snow White, and The Taming of the Shrew and produced works with intriguing titles like Requiem for Tesla, Get Your War On, and Have You Ever Been Assassinated? Like much of the troupe’s work, its latest touring production, The Method Gun, reflects on theater itself, specifically the world of acting instructors and their strenuous methodologies. It follows a company attempting to stage an avant-garde production of A Streetcar Named Desire without its controversial coach, Stella Burden (“the other Stella”). The sextet of actors performs in this unpredictable meta-comedy combining tiger costumes, swinging pendulums, balloons, nudity, video projection, and stultifying dance moves — Tennessee Williams on acid. For the Rude Mechanicals, it’s just another day at the office.
Fri., Feb. 8, 7 p.m.; Sat., Feb. 9, 7 p.m., 2013