Untitled Mars: This Title May Change

SPACE ODDITY Sweeney, right, encounters an astronaut.

Photograph: Justin Bernhaut

Director Jay Scheib doesn’t look like a geek. With his art-school specs, tousled hair and stylish attire, this laid-back orchestrator of multimedia installations surrounds himself with strikingly attractive actors and sexy technology. Yet scratch the surface and under the hipster auteur you might find a chubby nerd building a spaceship out of tin foil and cardboard in the garage. Now, Scheib and his dedicated actor-technicians have graduated to fancier materials with Untitled Mars: This Title May Change, a docu-video-performance piece that merges speculative science and avant-garde theatrics.

The elaborate, multizoned playing space created by Peter Ksander (the most ingenious set designer working downtown) is a re-creation of the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah—itself a simulation of the Martian landscape, where scientists hope we’ll establish a colony. The plot (related in elliptical fragments) is a crude pasteup of soap-opera seductions and sci-fi pulp, featuring a real-estate villain (Caleb Hammond), a heroic repair woman (Tanya Selvaratnam) and a scientist (April Sweeney) who may have found a link between schizophrenia and clairvoyance. Oh, and there’s a guy in green makeup with a giant lizard tail.

Using live video feeds and editing software to create the illusion of walking on the Martian surface, Scheib masterfully blends high-tech effects with his performers, who wrestle and simulate sex with gusto. (He himself appears, quizzing real scientists about space exploration via Skype linkup.) Even though the message—wherever we humans go, we’ll bring our problems—is old as Ray Bradbury, at least the vehicle is super space age. (See also “Martian to a different drummer,” page 161.)

—David Cote