By Ellen McCarthy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 4, 2008

The creative team behind Studio Theatre's new series of shows would prefer that you not read this article.

What they do on stage isn't easy to explain. But more important, they like it best when audiences come expecting nothing -- and are ready for anything.

"It's theater for the non-theatergoer," says Geoff Sobelle, one-half of Rainpan 43, the avant-garde theater group that has set up camp at Studio this month for a 20-day festival of their first three productions: "All Wear Bowlers," "Amnesia Curiosa" and "Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines Machines."

Sobelle and his artistic partner, Trey Lyford, conceived, drafted and star in the shows, performances they're reluctant to categorize in typical stage vernacular.

"We're not trying to make a play. If we were making a play, we would've made a play," says Sobelle, sitting in an alcove of the 14th Street theater during a break from rehearsal.

He isn't being difficult. It's just not a play.

Sobelle and Lyford, actors who met seven years ago through Lyford's wife, found in each other kindred spirits with a love of vaudeville, early films featuring Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy, and the exacting physical comedy of virtuoso clowns. (Think: Cirque du Soleil.)

Between traditional acting gigs, the two cooked up an early version of "All Wear Bowlers," which made its debut at the 2003 Philadelphia fringe festival. In it, the two appear to fall out of a black-and-white movie screen onto the stage and proceed to play with the audience's perception of what's real and what's imagined.

"I think of [the show] as existing between a live performer and a live audience," Sobelle says. "There's no other way to experience this except to be there."

When a polished version of the production was brought to an off-off-Broadway theater for a run in 2005, the New York Times deemed it "easily the most original and funny show this year."

"Amnesia Curiosa" came next, as the two found themselves, Sobelle recalls, wanting "to do a piece about families and about cabinets of curiosity." Naturally. But there it is, and if "All Wear Bowlers" is essentially about nothing, Sobelle adds, "this was to be a drunken celebration of everything," including medicine, the human form, history and secrets.

"Machines," the duo's latest work, peeks in on the lives of three paranoid men "who are terrified of this hidden enemy who never comes," Lyford explains. But theirs is a Rube Goldbergesque world where even the simplest tasks (pouring cereal, getting into bed, etc.) are done in the most complicated, convoluted fashion. Co-creator Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel also stars in the show.

This is the first time Lyford and Sobelle have staged all three works in a single run. But they're hoping that even audience members who see one show won't carry over notions of what to expect from the second or third.

"It's like 'Bowlers' is black-and-white, 'Amnesia' is sepia-toned and 'Machines' is in ultra-color," Sobelle says by way of explaining the difference.

But probably what he said first is right: You really just have to be there.

For a peek at all three shows, visithttp://www.allwearbowlers.com,http://www.amnesiacuriosa.comandhttp://www.machinesmachinesmachines.com.

Rainpan 43 Festival Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300. Through April 20. $29-$57 or $75 for all three. A performance Tuesday at 7:30 is pay-what-you-can. Rainpan 43 Festival Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St. NW. 202-332-3300. Through April 20. $29-$57 or $75 for all three. A performance Tuesday at 7:30 is pay-what-you-can.