There were knives, pie and pigs in the basement of the Lawrence Arts Center on Friday night.

Actually there was only one pig — a very special pig — but more about her a little later.

A tiny alternate universe opened up on the arts center’s small performance space stage during E.M.U. Theatre’s double bill of “Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise” and “Futz!” The avant-garde one-act plays practice bending reality, challenging audience members to examine how they apprehend the universe.

Harry Kondoleon’s 1982 “Self Torture and Strenuous Exercise,” directed by Gwethalyn Williams, is a puzzling four-person play, with characters so irrational and self-absorbed they can’t make meaningful connections with one another. Married couples Alvin (Ben Sutherland) and Beth (Blake Bolan) and their friends Carl (Jeff Sorrels) and Adel (Rachel Sorrels) appear normal enough. However, apparently Carl has had an affair with Beth and Adel has killed herself by slicing her wrists.

But wait. No. Adel hasn’t killed herself; Alvin is just convinced that she has because he is too absorbed in his gardening and cooking to notice she survived her attempted suicide, just as he is too caught up in his own little world to make much note of his wife’s infidelity or the fact that she seems unable to pull herself up off the floor.

The confusion continues with Adel’s entrance. In a rambling, histrionic tirade, she rails against her unfaithful husband and his plagiarized novel that fictionalizes the women in his life. Confusion and misunderstanding reign. Basically, these people talk at one another and rarely communicate anything.

Actually, there’s nothing very unusual about that after all.

The cast of Self

Williams has helped her actors get a good sense of the contrasts between these characters. Bolan’s aggressive Beth plays well against Sutherland’s fussy Alvin. Jeff Sorrels plays Carl with a convincing faux professorial air, while Rachel Sorrels’ Adel is wildly manic with brief moments of tenderness.

The second half of the double bill is Rochelle Owens’ “Futz!” A 1967 avant-garde classic, “Futz!” is the story of Cyrus Futz, whose unnatural relationship with his pig Amanda becomes public knowledge in the village. However, his barnyard romance is not really the point of this little fable about the conflict between individual and community.

Andrew Stowers convincingly conveys Futz’s strange attraction as a real emotion, tied to his disconnection and loneliness. Director Ron Willis gives his actors room to develop real people out of some of their characters’ very brief moments on stage. Noteworthy performances in the strong 13-person cast include Laura Rose’s emotionally dimensional turn as Majorie Satz, Futz’s reluctant girlfriend; Joel Reavis’ poor, puzzled Oscar Loop; and Marie Willis’ brief, memorable portrayal of the stolid Mother Satz.

As Willis suggests, this play explores “the boundaries of individual rights and freedoms seen juxtaposed against the controls and rules of a larger community.” Acting as narrator, Willis interprets for the audience, setting the scenes and appearing all the while to be separate from the tragedies that ensue. However, the narrator is finally drawn into the emotional arc of the play, revealing his reluctant empathy with Futz, recognizing — as the audience does — that these characters are all too familiar.