ANTENNA THEATER : AUDIENCE ‘INTERFERENCE’

It really isn’t a musical experience, though it does involve a good deal of singing, chanting, humming, background scoring and serenading.

It really isn’t a dance event, though the actors are required to strut, walk, run, gesticulate, shuffle, pose and preen on electronic command. There even is an organized tango orgy, of sorts.

It really isn’t a drama project in any conventional sense, though there is a good deal of role playing, masquerading and emoting, and the action does entail fanciful lighting effects, sets and costumes.

This perplexing extravaganza is performance art, an oh-so-mad and oh-so-mod expressive indulgence that exults in defying neat stylistic definitions. It also happens to herald--or so we are assured--the significant socio-aesthetic path to the future.

Oh, dear.

The atmospheric, out-of-the-way locale Saturday night was an old, abandoned Army warehouse on the bay at Ft. Baker in Sausalito. The ever-progressive sponsor was American Inroads, and the umbrella organization was the San Francisco New Performance Festival.

The host was an avant-gardish collective called Antenna Theater led by Chris Hardman. (Los Angeles sampled different wares by the same adventurous gang at the Olympic Arts Festival.) The current vehicle, if we can label it such, bore the ominous title, “Radio Interference.”

And the performers? The performers--meaningful and painful pause--were us. Repeat: us . US!

Remember the good old days when audiences served as innocent bysitters? Remember when we were content to remain receptive and passive while the active actors did their engaging things at a nice, safe distance on the stage?

Forget those blissful days.

Antenna Theater breaks down the hoary barriers. The audience here is instructed to stroll around 13 separate but unequal playing areas, to carry a Walkman, don earphones and follow recorded orders.

The experience is unnerving or enlightening, embarrassing or uplifting. It all depends on one’s basic exhibitionist inclinations, one’s willingness to be herded but not heard, one’s trust in unseen and unknown technological manipulators and one’s interest in the essential premise.

The premise? Our universe has become a mass of media muddles. Earthlings no longer know for sure whether they control the mystical forces of audio-video mumbo jumbo or vice versa.

“Have global communications brought us closer to understanding one another, or have they only created yet another level of Babel?” That is the official question.

Goodness gracious. The answer would seem to side with Babel.

To explore the profound implications of the premise, the wired volunteer audients wander at will, in and out of some modestly bizarre, constantly overlapping vignettes. All the participants march, as it were, to the taped drummer talking inside their aching heads.

Isn’t it wonderful?

Well. . . .

For starters, they can assume the scraggly white wig and pallid makeup of Andy Warhol (everyone is famous for 15 minutes, remember?).

The once-innocent observers can become a Billy Budd at the mercy of cruel nautical fates, or Old West pioneers evading lunacy while longing for mail from home. They can enlist as accident victims trapped in a strange, mind-boggling if not mind-altering hospital, or they can impersonate befuddled TV talk-show personalities.

They can follow a bemused quasi-Grecian would-be muse of media, or they can join the frantic dance-hall customers whose revelries are temporarily interrupted by Orson Welles’ broadcast heralding the war of the worlds.

And so it goes, for two trying hours. It goes slowly, self-consciously, archly, childishly. It goes good-naturedly, despite technical glitches, waits and distinct limitations in the prosaic realization of poetic fantasy.

The sound track has been eternalized and internalized. Isn’t it exciting, daring, provocative, far-out, totally insane?

Well. . . .

There are some comforts, even for reluctant protagonists in the guise of ancient curmudgeons. One doesn’t have to partake of every hi-tech experiment. One can lurk in the shadows, if one so desires, and watch others act foolish. One can sip a little wine and munch on a homemade brownie. One can contemplate one’s navel while the earnest guardians of the bold and dutiful shrink the outmoded space between play and public.

Or, if one really doesn’t happen to care what all those Walkpersons are saying, one can leave early.

Static is as static does.