Scorpions run amok in Artaud's chaotic fantasia.

Can’t wait until the summer brings its usual raft of theater festivals? Then wait no longer, friends, because tonight marks the start of the East Village’s third annual FRIGID New York, a highly eclectic and very affordable hotchpotch of shows by emerging companies. Many of the productions look quite promising: Check out the full roster here. But one in particular caught our eye, for sheer guts if nothing else: No. 11 Productions’ bold attempt—ah, brave youth!—to stage Antonin Artaud’s surrealist, insanely unstageable 1925 doodle Jet of Blood [Jet de Sang].

Why is Jet of Blood so unstageable, you may ask? In the latest installment of our Scriptease series, we offer you a brief sampler of stage directions from Artaud’s wacky four-page script, which should give you some idea of the level of craziness we’re talking about here:

Then enters a Medieval Knight in huge armor followed by a Wet Nurse who holds her chest with her two hands and breathes heavily because her breasts are too swollen.

The priest, unhappy with this answer, immediately takes on a Swiss accent.

At one point an enormous hand grabs the hair of the mackerel, which blazes and grows bigger.

She bites God on the wrist. A huge spurt of blood covers the scene.

She lets the Young Girl fall on the ground where she squishes into the ground, flat as a pancake.

Then a multitude of scorpions come out from underneath the skirts of the Wet Nurse and begin to swarm around her sex which in turn begins to swell and splits, becoming vitreous and shining like a sun.

This production employs a new translation by Cariad Shepherd, which, it must be said, is sometimes rather comically stilted; for example, note how the French word maquereau, slang for “bawd” or “pimp,” is rendered here in its nonsensical primary meaning as “mackerel.” (Ruby Cohn’s superior translation is available for free online.)

But of course the question of literalism is somewhat moot in a staging that will surely need to stray far from the letter of Artaud’s writing if it wishes to honor the spirit. “In this production of Jet of Blood or the Ball of Glass,” the show’s press release notes, “actors, painters, musicians, choreographers, puppeteers, and designers have collaborated to see if art can truly serve a revolutionary purpose.” ¡Viva Artaud!

Tickets are just $11, and can be ordered here.