Astro Boy in three dimensions, by a director who thinks multi-dimensionally

Like many of her pieces, “Negative Space” integrated the drawing of cartoons into the narrative. “She’s interested in the performance and magic of any intense process,” says Alex Thomas, the cartoonist whom Power recruited to be part of the Live Action company. “My involvement in theater was all because of Natsu.”

Thomas, who’d been a medical student while performing with Live Action and is now a pediatrician, was brought by Power to Washington in January for a week of drawing “boot camp” with the actors of “Astro Boy and the God of Comics,” who would be required to sketch on sheets of paper every night. The piece returns to Power’s signature subject, Tezuka, and attempts to link the origin tale of Astro Boy, the robot superhero who yearns to be human, with aspects of Tezuka’s life, as well as with the history of science fiction. It’s also a direct descendant of Live Action’s work, as it incorporates some scenes from the company’s earliest production.

(2003 Sony Pictures Television I) - Astro Boy, the signature character created by anime and manga pioneer Osamu Tezuka.

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“What I love to put into all of my shows is athletic drawing,” Power says. “Things being made onstage are important to me.” In the case of her “Astro Boy,” she also wanted to reflect in her production the primitive, cinematic action of the early “Astro Boy” animated cartoons. “We’ll quote the techniques of limited animation to tell a story of limited emotions,” she says.

Clark Young, a 2009 Georgetown graduate and one of the actors in the Studio show, has to gather his thought for several seconds before trying to characterize what “Astro Boy and the God of Comics” is up to. “The way I describe ‘Astro Boy’ is it’s a letter to an artist,” he says, finally. “It’s the honoring of his creation in all different genres of performance.”

“It’s a really universal story she’s trying to tell,” says Jamie Gahlon, another Georgetown alumus in the cast, whom Power pursued for the production because she knew how to draw; at auditions, all potential ensemble members had to put pen to paper. “It’s what it is to be human, and how do you love: How does personal narrative interweave with personal output?”

Young sees a connection, between the director and the source of her inspiration. “I was thinking about how resourceful they both are, in terms of taking things you wouldn’t expect to be beautiful and making them transcendent,” he says. “So much of what I’ve seen Natsu do has been on such a limited budget and small space, and she just finds a way to do it. That just reminds me of Tezuka, too.”

Power acknowledges her ongoing debt to the god of manga, but at the moment, she’s thinking more about how she might engage mere mortals with her theatrical ingenuity. “I would love it,” she says, “if comics geeks would come and see the play.”

“Astro Boy and the God of Comics”

Wednesday-March 11, 8:30 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Studio Theatre. 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300. www.studiotheatre.org.