‘Flying Words Project’

“One way a culture oppresses a minority culture is through language.” A performer merely saying this wouldn’t get the message across. But when deaf performer Peter Cook says it, and when hearing performer Kenny Lerner signs it (as they do in their collection of pieces, “Flying Words Project” at Friends and Artists Theatre), the message becomes a polemic of depth.

Theirs is a theater held aloft by language: American Sign Language (or ASL, by Cook) and English (usually spoken by the unobtrusive Lerner). What makes this “Project” more than a show with words signed for deaf audience members is Cook’s body language, his control over a large physical vocabulary.

In a fanciful piece like “Weak Spot: How a Simple Game of Frisbee Changes the Earth as We Know It,” Lerner keeps the words to a minimum as Cook’s movement shows a Frisbee game triggering a global flood. One moment, Cook will show a character’s “close-up,” then shift to a “long shot” of an object or scene, then “cut” to another “angle,” all by way of bodily twists and turns.

The fanciful is balanced by the seriously political, as in the final piece, “Mokita,” about a multi-generational Salvadoran family, the assassination of Archbishop Romero and El Salvador’s fate as a baseball game.

Cook and Lerner haven’t yet found a consistent balance between Beat-inspired poetry, complex storytelling, and a clear expression of the story’s action. We could also do without Lerner’s tendency to affect a sing-song vocal style typical of much children’s theater. But this remains a remarkable indication of theater’s potential to embrace, and give voice to, a culture’s oppressed.

At 1761 N. Vermont Ave., on Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 3 p.m., through March 19. Tickets: $12.50; (213) 664-0689.