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Today’s genetics: a Frankenstein tale

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Special to The Times

We live at a time when the body is considered endlessly customizeable and re-createable. Forget plastic surgery. Think designer genetics.

This biotechnological zeitgeist -- and the age-old desire for perfection that propels it -- is the subject of local performance duo Osseus Labyrint’s latest endurance test, “Modern Prometheus LLC,” which had its premiere Wednesday as part of UCLA Live’s International Theatre Festival.

Framed as the corporate launch of a new life form, “built from the atom up,” the piece was in progress as soon as one arrived at the Marina del Rey soundstage where it took place. Audience members were herded down a narrow hallway, then required to sign release forms to waive their rights to any DNA they might accidentally shed during the evening. And if one’s name happened to be on a list, a DNA sample (from a quick swab of the mouth) was demanded on the spot. Lab assistants stood by, ready to bag and label specimens.

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Only after passing through this gantlet could an audience member gain entrance to the cavernous but hardly corporate-looking laboratory of the mysterious Dr. Pank, a.k.a. electro-mechanical installation artist and primary collaborator Barry Schwartz.

Schwartz’s set featured a host of electric conductors and Tesla coils, emitting brilliant bursts of electrical arcs and sparks, along with the kind of arcane gizmos and gewgaws one would expect to find in the back-alley lair of a mad scientist.

After video projections of the disembodied head of the corporation’s CEO proclaimed the demise of the non-artificially selected human, a couple of lumbering automatons wheeled the shrink-wrapped forms of the “analogues” (Osseus Labyrint’s Hannah Sim and Mark Steger) into this sci-fi wonderland.

Sim and Steger’s signature mannequin look (completely naked, ghostly white skin shaved clean) and their finely honed isometric articulations were at the core of the ensuing spectacle. It featured a laborious series of ridiculously faux-scientific maneuvers, including some good old-fashioned zapping by Schwartz with a magic wand cum cattle prod.

From “Pinocchio” to “Frankenstein” to “Coppelia,” the ersatz human has haunted Western literature and ballet. “Prometheus” taps into the attraction of the superhuman and the fear of the monstrous that underlie the current manifestation of this fantasy, the clone.

And to be sure, it was disarming to witness Sim and Steger’s successful enactment of lifelessness as they hung suspended in the air by their ankles or necks for extended periods of time.

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Yet “Prometheus” remained ponderously one-note. As the 90-minute, intermission-less work wore on, its flimsy narrative seemed like little more than a showcase for the duo’s imagistic, idiosyncratic manner of writhing, contorting, and perambulating across the floor without using their arms or legs.

One also couldn’t help but be disillusioned to find that the next evolutionary step looks and acts pretty much the same as our current incarnation.

Same two choices of sex. Same anatomy. Same reproductive skills -- demonstrated in a graphic scene made all the more disturbing by Sims’ passive submission. Apparently these male scientists have developed a female who “knows her place.”

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Osseus Labyrint

Where: New Deal Studios, 4121 Redwood Ave., Marina del Rey

When: 8 p.m. today and Saturday, 7 p.m. Sunday

Price: $35

Contact: (310) 825-2101

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