Off Kilter, No Frills : The American Renegade Theatre’s Foundry Series will offer six original programs in six months, set on a minimalist stage and seeking to ‘juggle reality.’

Call it no-frills theater.

“We wanted to focus on lighting, writing and sound--leaving a lot to the actors, the directors and the imagination,” said R. J. Bonds, a co-founder of American Renegade Theatre’s Foundry Series, which kicked off its inaugural season last weekend in the theater’s back space.

“An Evening of One-Acts” is the first in the series, which will offer six original programs over the next six months, each staged on a minimalist set of cubes and squares.

“As a company, we wanted to stimulate our creative problem-solving skills,” Bonds added. “All the pieces will be a little different: a musical, an evening of 15 one-acts. We’re going to do some provocative types of theater--because there’s not a lot of that being done in Los Angeles. All three plays are different; they juggle reality. The whole evening is a little bit off kilter. It smells like reality, it’s in the ballpark, but it’s not. I hope people are going to say, ‘Whoa, what the hell was that? ‘ “

Bonds will direct the last piece in the program, Richard Sutherlin’s three-character “Buyers’ Market.”

“It’s about a writer who sells his soul,” said the New York transplant, who was one of the original cast members of the Vietnam War drama “Tracers” (Coronet Theatre, 1985). “He goes to a dirty, dingy office over Times Square and finds it’s not your typical dirty, dingy office over Times Square. It’s the devil’s lair. And Satan’s receptionist is something you wouldn’t expect.”

Anastasia Martino is directing the first piece on the program, Thayer Burch’s four-character “What It Takes.”

“It takes place in a dream of a 17-year-old boy,” Martino said. “Three aspects of his personality come to him during these nightly dreams and bring him closer to discovering the truth about himself. No. 3 is the childlike side, No. 2 is the adolescent, No. 1 is the adult, the leader.”

In a departure from the original script, Martino reversed the gender of the dreamer and his visitors.

“The dialogue is very open; I could take it in any direction,” she said. “It’s also very surreal, with all the elements of a dream.”

Paul Gunning, who recently co-wrote and co-starred in the AFI short film “The Tunnel,” is making his Los Angeles directorial debut with Burch’s three-character fantasy, “Beast on a Swing.”

“It’s about a husband, Jack, and his wife, Marjorie--and they’re just not communicating any more,” the New York-trained actor said. “Jack spends so much time at the office, their sex life is empty, the magic is gone. Also, Jack snores in his sleep, so Marjorie sleeps in the living room and meditates to find happiness. One night, she begins meditating and goes over the top: Lo and behold, what appears is a beast on a swing named Grum--who has the body of a man and the face of an alien beast.”

In the midst of this visitation, Jack wakes up and is confronted by the beast.

“Grum tries to take all the bad things out of Jack--like a surgical procedure,” said Gunning, who hired a Ringling Brothers trapeze artist, Svetla Krasteva, to train the actor playing the balletic beast.

“He pulls out the hammer Jack uses to drive home his points, the bowling ball that kept him out every Thursday night, a porno movie--till finally Jack is empty of all of the things that’ve blocked the relationship for so long.”

The moral of the story? “Don’t take the person you love for granted. And never stop caring.”

Where and When What: “An Evening of One-Acts.” Location: American Renegade Theatre, 11305 Magnolia Blvd., North Hollywood. When: 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays. Closes June 6. Price: $12 to $15. Call: (818) 763-4430.