Breaking up less hard to do ... in a car

Since their invention, automobiles have doubled as hotel rooms and therapy couches of the lovelorn. They are little lounges for listening to music, making out, or baring the deep secrets of the soul.

Out of Hand Theater’s Adam Fristoe believes that cars, by virtue of their ability to make speedy exits, are used just as regularly for breakups.

Dumping your partner in a Porsche or a Mini Cooper is a far more intimate approach than sending a text message. It also has proved a nimble theatrical device for Out of Hand’s “The Break Up,” in which ensemble members split up with strangers who volunteer to sit in cars during brief performance pieces staged at festivals around town this spring.

“We don’t discriminate. We’ll dump anybody,” Fristoe, Out of Hand co-artistic director, jokes of the ensemble-created audience-participation plays. Staged in loaner vehicles from corporate sponsor Zipcar, “The Break Up” plays were a hit of April’s Inman Park Festival and are revving up for repeat performances May 29-30 at the Decatur Arts Festival.

Known for generating its own intensely physical style of comedy, Out of Hand has been riffing on cars since 2001, when it staged a 10-minute Naomi Wallace monologue inside an automobile.

More recently concerned with trying to connect with new audiences in a tough economy, the group decided to develop short plays that could be staged at outdoor gatherings — for free.

Each “Break Up” would happen inside a parked car with the engine running, would use some type of music and, contrary to popular opinion about such experiences, would leave the dumped passenger with a positive feeling, a chance to start again. (That’s the cue for a big hug.)

“The idea,” Fristoe says, “is to take an experience that is common to all of us and that’s potentially horrific and to see if we can maybe transform that experience into something that’s inspirational or about promise or opportunity.”

Well, then. Perhaps the best part of breaking up is when you’re ... breaking up.

Some examples:

‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’

Company member Geoffrey “Googie” Uterhardt has a background in puppets, so he decided to borrow his sister’s old Fisher-Price toys and play around.

The result is an adorable, textless yarn about a country boy who falls in love with a city girl. Using travel postcards like scenic backdrops, and set to John Denver songs (“Thank God I’m a Country Boy”), the actor describes a couple traveling the world in a two-seater car and camper.

“They are so in love,” Uterhardt says.

But then something awful happens. And in seconds flat, the actor is “Leaving on a Jet Plane,” pretending to fly out of the vehicle on his Fisher-Price plane. “A lot of people get out of the car saying, ‘That was the coolest thing,’ Uterhardt says. “Or they scratch their head and say, ‘I have no idea what just happened to me.’ ”

‘Take Your Time (Coming Home)’

Park Krausen, a willowy brunette who speaks in a seductive warble, confronts her “date” in bare feet, without makeup or jewelry, and speaks with breathy physicality. She hands the partner something written on a piece of paper and asks him or her to read it.

Turns out it’s a Buddhist text from the “Dhammapada.” Her song, “Take Your Time (Coming Home),” is by the pop group Fun.

As the unsuspecting passenger reads, “I will repeat things back to them,” says Krausen, who works regularly at Georgia Shakespeare and is also artistic director of Theatre du Reve.

The Buddhist text deals with letting go, living in love, taking delight in the senses, letting happiness follow you. By the time she opens the car door to release her passenger, she has persuaded the person that he or she has fallen out of love and needs to go. Smart.

Krausen says the responses have been varied. Some participants are timid about being touched; others leave floating on air.

Making theater into an event

Out of Hand has a long history of staging event-style theater that sweeps the audience into the happening.

“Meds” was set in a doctor’s waiting room that eventually collapses into a traditional arena-style setting. “Help!” was a spoof of motivational seminars that required audiences to participate (or at least raise their hands). Charles Mee’s “Big Love” was a wedding performed outside at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center.

By doing “The Break Up” in public places with car engines running, the group has found that bystanders have an innate curiosity about what’s happening inside the automobile. Some want to join in. Others are more comfortable as voyeurs.

At the end of each performance, everyone gets a postcard/advertisement for “The Show!”— a carnival-style vaudeville that Out of Hand is staging for the late-night weekend crowd at Horizon Theatre in Little Five Points.

“The Break Up”