THEATER REVIEW : Openers at 7th Neofest Press Sushi’s Claim to Be San Diego’s Creative Laboratory

It started with a highway shooting and continues with a guided tour through the mind of a man suffering psychotic breaks.

Yes, Sushi’s seventh annual Neofest has begun.

Sushi, a tiny cultural oasis floating in the depths of shadowy Eighth Avenue, has not only gone where few theater companies dare to go geographically, it prides itself on venturing to the edge artistically.

Sushi has a year-round season, but its pride is Neofest, a concentrated, monthlong festival of what artistic director Lynn Schuette feels is the freshest and best that contemporary art, music, dance and theater have to offer.

The “best” to Sushi does not necessarily translate into the most polished and certainly not the best-known.

Ever heard of “Woyzeck and Maria on East 94,” the story of the freeway shooting that played Saturday at the old Carnation warehouse?

Or how about David Keevil’s “Really Seeing Bert,” a tale of the author’s psychotic childhood friend that started its three-week run Monday?

No one else has either. Both are brand new.

The kick-off event, “Woyzeck and Maria on East 94,” may well prove to be this year’s Neofest at its most spectacular. Director Bartlett Sher took a large stage, the outside of the Carnation warehouse downtown, and orchestrated five cars, five television monitors and a cast of close to 40 into a story about a terrified woman named Maria, who so feared that someone yelling at her on the road was going to hurt her that she shot and killed him.

Inspired by the original story of “Woyzeck,” in which an Everyman is driven to madness and is then destroyed by bureaucrats in the system he lives in, “Maria and Woyzeck,” which centers on Maria’s trial, seems flavored by Albert Camus’ “The Stranger” as well.

As in “The Stranger” or the recent movie “A Cry in the Dark,” Maria, brilliantly portrayed by Carla Kirkwood, who co-wrote the script with Deborah Small, is condemned less for what she has done than for the way she is unable to play the public relations game in court.

She dresses inappropriately (too like a cocktail waitress) and she fails to cry. The jury seems as offended by her independence and obstinacy as by the shooting, and decides to punish her with death as a warning to others.

The supporting cast is a strong one, but it is Kirkwood’s intense performance that stands out, even when she is silent, as something that smolders even after death.

In contrast to “Maria and Woyzeck,” “Really Seeing Bert” is a minimal piece, with the author, David Keevil, dividing his audience into groups and assigning each group a part to read in what he terms “a concerto for soloist and chamber-audience.”

What may seem at first to be an acutely embarrassing idea for the audience, gradually serves to make the story of Bert peculiarly involving. It is hard to step back and judge even a psychotic character when it is you who is reciting his fantasies and fears.

“Really Seeing Bert” also gives insights into the making of a performance art piece, a definite plus if it serves to make this challenging form more accessible to local audiences.

Judging by the scant audiences at most Sushi events, this organization, which draws some funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, may well be more appreciated nationally than locally.

That’s too bad. The work presented by Sushi may be raw, uneven, lacking in intellectual cohesion. But these are not grave faults for pieces emerging uncertainly, like new and fantastic life forms from a creative laboratory.

Some of the ideas that have been espoused by Sushi for years--the value of works that are interdisciplinary, merging dance with theater, music, art and video screens--are beginning to infiltrate mainstream theaters. Shows like the Old Globe’s “Coriolanus,” in which Shakespeare’s tragedy was recast in the shadow of Contragate, reflects these ideas, although “Coriolanus” was done on a much grander scale than anything a place like Sush could afford.