STAGE REVIEW : ‘PIECEMEAL’ SERVES UP 8 STATEMENTS

Why loading docks and cement floors seem to complement performance art is a mystery, but they do, and “Piecemeal Too” probably won’t look as interesting when it moves outdoors to MacArthur Park on Sunday as it does now at 490 Bauchet St.--an enormous warehouse across the tracks from the County Jail.

Still, the show’s success can’t be totally ascribed to its setting. Of the eight pieces performed, almost all have something to say, and three do so memorably, starting with Roger Guenveur Smith’s concluding rap on growing up black in Compton--not that far, spiritually speaking, from Capetown.

This one will look good at MacArthur Park, with Smith’s drummer, O.G., slowly turning up the heat until the crowd can’t help joining in. It’s a direct piece, but, rhythmically, an involved one, its interplay of rhyme and rhythm as impossible to notate as good jazz.

Ben R. Caldwell’s visuals supply a third rhythmic force. This is a good example of how a pop form can be turned to a higher purpose without losing track of its roots.

The show, presented by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions and Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design, is overseen by New York’s Re. Cher. Chez, an offshoot of the Mabou Mines. But the talent is all local, and it is real talent.

Take Julie Hebert’s piece, “Almost Asleep.” This feels like a real pre-dream, full of shocks and starts as its five dreamers (all women: Priscilla Cohen, Tyra Ferrell, Tina Preston, Patricia Mattick, Deborah Slater) toss on their beds, seeking oblivion.

But their minds keep producing compulsive sentences. “I’m on medication.” “He’ll learn not to underestimate short, dark women.” They start sleepwalking in their nighties, and we get the image of an out-of-body gathering, even a witches’ sabbath. Some very female stuff going on here.

Ellen Lampert’s “Nightmare in the Dream Factory” is a pop sculpture environment come to life. We’re in an L.A. where the line between news and entertainment has been totally erased, where an ultra-cool disc jockey dedicates the next tune to the lady being held hostage by the gunman at “34th and Vine.” It’s all part of the mix on KROK.

There’s very little live action in “Nightmare,” but Lampert combines lights, tapes, actors and a comic-strip back wall so cleverly that the piece seems constantly in motion. The comic strip contains the graffito “Art Is Anything You Can Get Away With,” but this artist knows her business.

Almost all the pieces plug into society at one point or another, which isn’t always the case in performance pieces. “The Great Wall” has May Sun remembering her Chinese aunts, brave communists who “had their revolution and their tea party too.”

Suzanne Averitt’s “Merry Saint Patrick’s Day” is an encounter with the kind of crazy person that we do encounter on the streets these days, handing out her photocopied prescriptions for the salvation of the universe. “Echoes Never Die” by Los Illegals and the Alienz attacks urban violence--rather vaguely, I thought, but with lots of heavy-metal energy. The two weakest pieces were Kathleen Becket’s “Cardboard Castles,” in which four people did cryptic things in a junk landscape, and Philip Littell’s “Karma Loca,” a live animated cartoon with funny costumes (by Daren Roy) and trying-to-be-funny performers. With irony so prevalent these days, camp has got to be sharper than this.

In the main, though, “Piecemeal Too” is worth picking up on, especially in the factory district. It plays at 490 Bauchet St. at 8 p.m. tonight and Saturday, then moves to the MacArthur Park bandshell for a 3-7 p.m. marathon on Sunday. Tickets are $7 (free on Sunday). Call (213) 624-5650.