Imagery Lingers in Surreal ‘Blood’

Although he may not have been a widely accepted Surrealist (Andre Breton expelled him from the movement because of his fervent dedication to communism), Antonin Artaud shows his credentials clearly in his “Spurt of Blood.” As staged by Michael Shamus Wiles, Artaud’s four-page text is filled with mysterious strangers, cackling scorn and nightmarish confusion, presented alfresco in the Spanish Kitchen Studios’ inner courtyard.

In this Fellini-meets-Brazilian-carnival take, the peddler is a gaudily dressed cigarette girl (Gleason Bauer) selling peanuts from a box that reads, “Raid kills bugs dead.” The nurse (Wiles replacing Matt Aston at this performance) is a tall man with long, black hair in a stylized kimono and very full breasts. The judge is a woman (Katja Sambeth) in a prom dress carrying around a mousetrap, offering the audience the cheese inside. And the whore literally becomes a red lady (Tamar Fortgang). Nuclear devastation and natural disaster are illustrated in images projected on the walls.

Despite a lack of plot and dialogue, Wiles makes it all work with imagery and unabashed performances by all the inmates of this hallucination.

Preceding “Spurt of Blood” is a one-man performance piece, “On Taste,” written by Loren Rubin and Jon Kellam. Based on Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s 1925 essay “The Physiology of Taste,” this piece has a mildly diverting but mute chef (Rubin), chopping up and cooking a chicken to Kellam’s voice-overs. It’s amusing, but real chefs won’t be impressed.

* “Spurt of Blood,” Spanish Kitchen Studios, 734 E. 3rd St., Los Angeles. Saturdays-Sundays, 8 p.m. Ends March 30. $10. (213) 620-9229. Running time: 1 hour, 15 minutes.