One encounter this weekend at the Kleinau Theater could change a girl’s life forever.

“Athena and the Apple,” from writer-director Nicole Wood, a doctoral candidate in performance studies from Chicago, in part explores experimentation through the frame of fruit.

“I had originally produced this script in a playwriting class,” she said. “that was about a woman who masturbated with a piece of fruit and a tree grew out of her vagina.”

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Wood said the piece she originally intended to produce had so much going on, it would require a large cast, among other obstacles. It could not be produced, so she transformed the piece to focus on two central actors.

The performance features two new talents to the Kleinau Theater’s stage: Ruby Roknic, a senior from LaGrange Park studying university studies plays Athena, and Pearl Cummings, a junior from Chicago studying performance studies, plays the apple. Each, however, do participate in multiple parts.

“It’s all about being creative in trying to tell a complex, goofy, entertaining story, but also one everyone can connect to,” Roknic said. “It’s been fun to be a part of.”

As it is a Kleinau performance, “Athena” is an experimental composition of writing as well as acting. It is comprised of minimalist sets dealing with a surrealist narrative that explores extraordinary realities.

“When you experiment, you can’t have a pre-conceived notion of what you’re going to find,” Wood said. “You have to be genuinely open and a little bit objective to what’s in front of you.”

“Athena and the Apple” divides itself through three storylines. One storyline explores emotions to relate with the audience, while the other storylines shift between scientific and experimental scenes. Some are musical with dramatic dance and song, while others speak directly to the audience and one makes use of a “smell-camera.” Wood got the idea for one story, set on a lifeboat, from a short story.

“I came up with these three narratives. I was still stuck on this image of the fruit, then the smell-camera and then I came upon the life boat,” Wood said. “The lifeboat story was actually adapted from a short story by Mathew Swanson called ‘Floating on the Ocean.'”

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“Athena and the Apple” uses explanatory phrases in place of things that are usually silent, like body language —the actors speak phrases such as, “an awkward silence ensues” in place of the silence. The performance often breaks the fourth wall and speaks genuinely to the audience. Words of intrigue relative to the piece are picked apart and discussed in depth, often included and explored dramatically deep within the narrative.

The performance shifts between the literal and intangible —It must be taken as both literal and metaphorical. The piece delivers a message of simple human experience and experimentation.

Wood said that if one considers art and science and how they are connected, he or she will find the ways in which experimentation truly involves both doing and thinking.

“If you like sex, experimenting and surviving, this is the play to watch,” Cummings said.

Jake Saunders can be reached at [email protected]