Theater at Bumbershoot: Mostly offbeat, and many off the beaten path

Let's face it: Bumbershoot is mainly about music, and about cultural grazing. It's not, for most of the teeming crowd, about hanging tight for an hour as a play or other production unfolds.

But there are theater performances at Bumbershoot, so how do you find them?

You could just hang out at the Center House Theatre, where the umbrella organization Theatre Puget Sound is booking the acts.

Or you could peruse the Bumbershoot schedule very carefully, combing through the full lineup at the Center House and spotting the scattered additional theatrical performances at other venues.

The theatrical fare offers (mainly) offbeat and experimental shows that are easily accessible, and might make for a worthwhile change of pace.

Here are some of the more enticing offerings:

"Project X: You Are Here." The youthfully hip, energized and resourceful Portland experimental company Hand2Mouth is back, with a show it describes as, "A museum. A performance. A living time capsule." Hand2Mouth will "capture and record the life experiences" of festivalgoers at "Ground Control," an outdoor site on the Seattle Center grounds described as "a research hub and interactive museum from which satellites — small, mobile performance units — radiate around the grounds." All clear on that? Well, neither are we. But maybe you just have to be there. (On the grounds, 11 a.m.-8 p.m., Saturday through Monday.)

Joe Goode Performance Group. San Francisco choreographer-director Joe Goode is a longtime innovator, and he's bringing a novel double-bill to Bumbershoot this year. Up first is "Maverick Strain," a deconstruction of Arthur Miller's screenplay for "The Misfits," the fabled last film of Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Montgomery Clift.

The second, longer piece: "Wonderboy," a dance-theater work that incorporates the magical puppetry of Basil Twist, a New York and San Francisco sensation who has yet to mount a major show in Seattle. (3:30 p.m. Saturday, 8 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. Monday at Bagley Wright Theatre.)

"Memory War Theatre Project." Tikka Sears and company present a piece dedicated to "work created under compulsion," which "explores the struggles of people when forced to create in order to survive." Seen at On The Boards' 2007 NW New Works Festival, this multimedia piece draws on the true stories of artists who have survived such calamities as the Iraq war, Cambodian genocide and the Nazi Holocaust, and kept on creating. (6:30 p.m. Monday at Center House Theatre.)

"Apocalypse in Coney Island: A Burlesque Cabaret." The nouvelle burlesque phenomenon continues with this showcase for a variety of "edgy" purveyors of this naughty, adult-oriented form. Bumbershoot co-curated the bill with Noorderzon Festival in the Netherlands, and the acts include Dirty Martini, the Wau Wau Sisters and Julie Atlas Muz. (8:30 p.m. Saturday and 3:30 p.m. Sunday at Bagley Wright Theatre.)

"Yoga Bitch." What's so funny about peace, love and shoulder-stands? A lot, according to solo performer Suzanne Morrison, whose one-woman show is billed as "a wild ride" that careens through "everything that can possibly go wrong on the road to enlightenment." (4 p.m. Sunday, 1 p.m. Monday at Center House Theatre.)

"Snow Queen: Gerda's Journey." The ever-adventurous Seattle troupe theater simple presents an imaginative, all-ages take on a famed Hans Christian Andersen tale. Though previously performed in outdoor parks, this is the indoor version of this treatment of a fable about a young girl's colorful search for a friend. (1 p.m. Saturday, 4:45 p.m. Monday at Center House Theatre.)

"Reefer Madness." This spoofy stage musical about the societal evils of recreational marijuana, based on the campy film of the same title, had a short Seattle run several months ago, and is back to blow a few more minds at Bumbershoot. (6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at Center House Theatre.)

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com