Redcat

He roams the night in menacing military police garb in search of homosexuals. No, he's not cruising the bars of West Hollywood, the Castro or Chelsea. He's the head of Uganda'sspecial task force for the country's Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Funny, isn't it, the way the words "probe" and "penetrative" always seem to be on his lips? He insists his nation won't "bend over" for homosexuality and believes that the enforcement of the "penal code" is way too "soft. " Satire plays only a small part in Ntare Guma Mbaho Mwine's solo show "A Missionary Position," which is receiving its world premiere at REDCAT in an artfully staged production that runs through this weekend.

No one ever called Sandra Bernhard a simple girl at heart, and her latest show, "Sandrology," which opened Wednesday at REDCAT, is a kind of loosely constructed seminar on her glamorously defiant complexity. Looking as stylish as ever in a black "off-the-rack" designer cocktail dress with deep pockets that prompt all kinds of apocalyptic scenarios of how they might one day come in handy, she has come back to Los Angeles to "bring the realness. " And the taunting redhead whose résumé includes stints as Bravo TV's "pop culture anthropologist" doesn't pull any punches in her survey of the celebrity world, where not even those who open doors for her are safe from her skewering.

A remarkable, immersive installation at REDCAT is a collaboration between San Francisco artist Rigo 23 (born Ricardo Gouveia) and Zapatista artists and craftspeople from Chiapas, in southern Mexico. With the seemingly incongruous title “Autonomous InterGalactic Space Program,” it uses the language of interstellar travel to announce a fundamental departure from the world as we know it. Whatever you think of the Zapatista communities, there's no denying they are a radical experiment.

Visceral expressionism and a prodigious visual beauty coalesced in “Cold Dream Colour,” a dance-theater homage to seminal Irish artist Louis le Brocquy. It received its U.S. premiere at a sold-out performance Wednesday evening (continuing through Sunday). An international gathering of dance artists, designers and musicians calling themselves the Arcane Collective animated the REDCAT performance box through meditatively unreeling movement and a soundscape of plaintive guitar strumming, alternating with drums and bells (from U2's The Edge and composer Paul Chavez)

The first of the two-day New Zealand in L.A. festival at REDCAT on Wednesday night featured eight chamber and solo works by Kiwi composers, none with much of an international reputation, and a renowned performer on Maori instruments, Richard Nunns. The audience was quite small. Despite the wonderful “Whale Rider” and the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy (Nunns performs on the soundtracks), New Zealand remains musically remote. I'm intentionally ignoring Hayley Westenra. But that could change overnight.

'Gloria's Cause' Where: REDCAT 631 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles When: 8:30 p.m., Thursday-Saturday; 7 p.m. Sunday Price: $20-$25 Contact: (213) 237-2800 or http://www.redcat.org

At first, Dayna Hanson says, she felt "a little intimidated" when she decided to create a "multimedia extravaganza" about the American Revolution. As an artist, she says, "I don't often undertake such sweeping topics, and I didn't feel like I had a ton of knowledge about this part of history. " Best known for co-founding the Seattle-based dance-theater company 33 Fainting Spells, Hanson wound up embarking on a rigorous research-based quest to expose the contradictions she observed between America's founding principles and current political and economic realities.

Americans who enjoy using recreational drugs probably don't like to imagine the ripple effects in Mexico: the predatory narco gangs and corrupt cops in Ciudad Juárez, the bullet-riddled bodies and ravaged neighborhoods in Tijuana and Michoacán. But at a recent rehearsal of "Timboctou," a darkly comic, disquieting play set against the backdrop of the Mexican drug wars that's having its world premiere through Sunday at REDCAT , director Martín Acosta reflected on the bloody connective tissue that the experimental drama weaves between Mexico's ruthless narco lords and their naive and insatiable U.S. customers.

CalArts Winter Dance Where: REDCAT, downtown L.A. When: 8:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday Information: (213) 237-2800 or at http://www.redcat.org.