Ronald Peet (standing) and Cast Photo by Alexander Mejía, Bergamot

Beginning with the beginning, which amusingly emits a Chorus Line-like vibe. Asa (Ronald Peet), a They and the hot young auteur-director of the moment, is auditioning actors for their new opus, each reading the same script passages and unveiling their personalities in the process. Ro (Opa Adeyemo) is smiley and easygoing, comfortable in his skin. Rinni (Susannah Perkins) is German and detached, ungiven to emotion (she eventually unbends a little). Keeyon (Hayward Leach) is insecure and, Hassan's script says, "faggy." Tristan (Omar Shafiuzzaman), a Brit, is the opposite of Rinni, unable to contain what he's feeling. Mel (Karina Curet), Latina, well off, has her devious side, but mostly she's just glad to be there. Savannah (Amandla Jahava) we like from the start; she's a ball of energy, and she can act. And Angelique (Maya Margarita), trans, is a mass of contradictions, as kindly as she is blunt and judgmental. Also on hand: Walton (Mark Junek), Asa's husband who's designing the production, and Danny (Alex Wyse), a dramaturg who takes notes, records the actors, and otherwise hasn't much to do. They're a young bunch, mostly early 20s, hence moldable into whatever Asa wants, and that's where most of the action, if you can call it that, resides.

But once their basic personality traits are revealed, we don't find out a lot more about this ensemble, and it's basically one acting exercise after another, designed by Asa to turn this disparate group into a unified entity. What Asa's play is about, too, we never really find out–it seems to consist of dialogue from the practice sessions that Danny recorded. That press release, again, says Practice is "based on (extremely) personal experience," but whatever Hassan went through, it isn't clearly conveyed.

What we get instead is a lot of... practice, group activities to shape both the actors' individual skills and their ability to function as a unit. "Let the body tell the mind how to feel," Asa instructs Ro, and if that sounds like a difficult process to convey on a stage, it is. Certainly these actors, under Keenan Tyler Oliphant's busy direction, are extravagantly physical: They dance a lot, roll around on the floor to no perceivable purpose, get sexual at the drop of a cue. But you can't say that these characters grow.

The first act, and it's two hours, unfolds in the Brooklyn church-turned-theater fond to Asa's heart; after intermission we travel to Berlin and London to witness the finished product, which evidently is called Self-Awareness Exercise 001. Slow going, though there is fun along the way. Among Asa's activities are a truth-telling game where each actor has to recite three facts about him/her/theirself, and the others have to guess which one is the lie. Seems like a useful acting exercise, and it does tell us a bit more about this often inscrutable troupe. Asa also hosts a series of onstage communal dinners, sets up a chart where the performers can anonymously criticize one another, and dispenses jellybeans as rewards for good work. None of this is inherently riveting, but good lines pop up, especially when Asa supplies everyone with joints and magic mushrooms. And the lack of structure in whatever this play of theirs is becomes intriguing: Are the actors playing themselves? What are they discovering about themselves? How much are they surrendering to Asa's authority?

But the writing gets flowery, to little purpose. Asa: "We have so many things that want our attention, so many things: like smells wafting from the restaurants and trash cans and dog shit desperate to announce their presence and plead their case." Hmm? And get this, from Hassan's program note: "The playwright, sick with voices rattling inside their heads, vomits their mania onto the actors, who are asked to soak it in and regurgitate it exactly how it was consumed." Yeah, I guess that happens.

Asa has the most dialogue, yet, in Peet's guarded performance, they remain something of a cipher. They like control, especially when it comes to jellybeans (a good, tense scene involving possible jellybean theft). And we barely get to know Danny or Walton at all, despite a long Walton-Keeyon interlude, complete with making out. Among the actors-playing-actors, Margarita and Shafiuzzaman leave the strongest impressions, the latter nailing a monologue about a painful memory involving his cousin, while Perkins has a formidable reserve that meshes well with Rinni, and Leach dances up a storm. But as the actors are all playing functionaries of Asa's vision, they don't get many opportunities to stand out.

What does stand out is Masha Tsimring's blistering lighting, which toward the end turns a gold so blinding that you may want to look away. By then we're in Berlin and London, in performance. The ensemble, quoting Asa, declares, "I've taken up residence in the bodies and minds of my company, they would do anything for me." Asa is commenting on dominance and power, yet they're also practicing it.

This is a love-it-or-hate-it play for sure, and after three hours even the enthusiasts–there were plenty, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many of them are actors–may be getting restless. Put me mostly in the hate-it camp, but I'll concede that Hassan is an intelligent writer who can come up with creative phraseology and jarring shifts of tone. By the time Keeyon was giving out with, "I am the fragile Rorschach on the back of a butterfly's wings and I'm weird," though, I was ready to bolt.