Russian roulette

LOUNGE LIZARDS Pig Iron's actors mix science lit and reptiles.

Photograph: Pig Iron Theatre Company

If you’ve ever seen Pig Iron Theatre Company, you might imagine that its creative process resembles old-timey Hollywood pitch meetings: muttering producers searching for a boffo concept in a smoky room. “I got it!” one barks around his Cuban. “We take Chekhov, mix it up with neurobiology and autism, then we dress the whole shebang up with hundred-year-old male undergarments!” Brilliant! Pig Iron’s Dan Rothenberg chuckles at the evocation of this fanciful brainstorming session for his latest show, Chekhov Lizardbrain. The director, 35, allows that his Philadelphia-based group’s methodology is very much determined by material. “We’re always changing tack,” he says. “Some of the work is really intimate. Some of it is sprawling. We just don’t have a brand.”

The director does have a soft spot for science journals—especially those that try to explain human consciousness. “This particular show is about neurology and why people do the things they do,” he explains. “There’s this new fad called evo-devo. That stands for evolutionary development: There must be some evolutionary benefit to what we do, like believing in God.” In past years, Rothenberg’s obsessions have led to a corpse-enacted Measure for Measure in a city morgue (Isabella), a multiroom installation about the social dynamics of cash exchange (Pay Up!) and a tennis-inflected adaptation of a Witold Gombrowicz novel (Hell Meets Harry Halfway).

Chekhov Lizardbrain—which debuted in Philly last spring and now has a limited run at the Ohio Theatre—began with actors playing around with Three Sisters. First, they explored an acting style inspired by Paul MacLean’s “triune brain theory”: that one’s gray matter can be compartmentalized into a lizard brain, a dog brain and a human brain. Company members then became fascinated with the minor character of Solyony, who seems bipolar and socially awkward. “There’s always something that draws my attention on the margins,” Rothenberg says.

Soon, the Three Sisters script was put aside and a new character emerged: Dmitri, an autistic Chekhov enthusiast, distantly influenced by animal researcher Temple Grandin. “Dmitri only has two or three ideas about Chekhov,” Rothenberg explains. “One is that he’s Russian. Two is that everyone follows a script. And three is that Chekhov really understands how people work. So he’s made up a kind of bowdlerized, fantasy version of what a Chekhov play must be. But it’s completely wrong. He imagines people in handlebar mustaches and top hats speaking with stilted formality. This calms him down. It’s kind of a Donnie Darko persona.”

Dmitri (James Sugg) is assisted by three brothers, all of whom are dressed in early-20th-century underwear, garters and all. This sartorial choice, Rothenberg says, was intuitive, but makes sense in Dmitri’s bizarre world. “It definitely relates to not understanding social codes,” he says. Dmitri’s alter ego is the titular Chekhov Lizardbrain, “who’s a master of the human mind and will explain everything,” Rothenberg says.

All this might sound like very cryptic and esoteric theater, but guess what? Pig Iron is one of Philadelphia’s most beloved and well-supported troupes, with a healthy $600,000 annual budget and prominent spots each year in Philly’s Live Arts Festival. The company was formed 14 years ago by college buddies at Swarthmore College and is grounded in Jacques Lecoq clown training and the collaborative ideals of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil. And theatergoers in the City of Brotherly Love relish Pig Iron’s eclectic and rigorous style.

“They’ve got a huge following, like 3,000 people will come see their work,” says Nick Stuccio, head of Live Arts. “And they basically reinvent themselves for each production.” Stuccio relates the popularity of the company to the fact that Philadelphians don’t have Broadway sucking up all the oxygen in the room. “Broadway is part of the theater DNA in New York,” he notes. “But since we don’t have that in our backyard, there’s a tendency to embrace the less traditional.” Local pride and lower cost of living don’t hurt either, he adds.

“There are different kinds of provincialism everywhere you go,” Rothenberg points out. “We’re always trying to not let people do the knowing laugh. We recalibrate wherever we are. New Yorkers are terrible about the knowing laugh. They’ll see something dark and brutal and laugh—just to show to fellow audience members how savvy they are.” Clearly, Pig Iron’s constant shuffling of the aesthetic deck keeps it one step ahead of the complacent chortlers.

Chekhov Lizardbrain is playing atthe Ohio Theatre through Oct 19.