‘Bloom’ Unfolds, All Abuzz With Symbolism

At the beginning of “Bloom,” Danielle Brazell’s solo show at Highways, three or four audience members at a time are escorted slowly through white curtains into the theater. There, they are individually greeted by the naked Brazell, who hisses warnings and advice in a panicked whisper as she guides them to seats.

The setting is stark--a water-filled bowl on a table, four mounds of earth placed at the outermost corners of the playing area. Brazell begins the action by ritualistically washing herself. Soon, blurry videos of marauding killer bees--the operative metaphor for the piece--flicker behind her. The bees, Brazell intones, are rapacious colonizers who subject native hives to dominance and death.

The tone of underlying dread and paranoia is set early on, but don’t expect an evening of woe-is-me victim-venting. Formerly of the Sacred Naked Nature Girls, a robustly feminist collective whose largely nude performances de-mythicized the airbrushed feminine ideal, Brazell has a puckish sense of humor and a talent for epigram that lifts her above the throng of performance art poseurs. Although her work is purposely arcane, she nonetheless has something to say, and she says it well.

Directed by Tre Temperilli, Brazell’s co-writer, with original lighting and video segments by Carol McDowell, “Bloom” was originally commissioned by the Theatre d’Arsenic and the La Batie Festival in Switzerland, and has played various European venues before this “new and improved” version.

Fusing a young woman’s painful coming-of-age story with an apt examination of national homophobia, the show is a bully pulpit for Highways artistic director Brazell’s musings about gays in America, ironically portrayed here as “killer bees” out to subvert the status quo. The symbolism may be obvious, but it is effective, as are Brazell’s wrenching, funny reminiscences of adolescent terror. Brief but heartfelt, “Bloom” is not so much a play as it is a ceremonial unfolding.

* “Bloom,” Highways, 1651 18th St., Santa Monica. Today, Saturday, 8:30 p.m. Ends Saturday. $15. Running time: 1 hour.