Skewed Visions’ new movement-theater piece, "He Woke Up in a Strange Place Called Home and Although Looking for Bed He Kept Finding Death Instead," may be Charles Campbell’s most accessible work. As the 10-person audience’s guide for the dreamlike foray through a Mac-Groveland neighborhood, Campbell is a bespectacled, bathrobe-wearing Pied Piper with a bad case of bed-head who’s both somewhat privy to, but also curious about, where we’re going next.

Good thing he’s so endearing, and relatable. Because the vignettes that occur in a living room, on a deck, along the sidewalk, in someone’s backyard, and in an empty dining room are at once captivating and harrowing. Inspired by George Büchner’s "Woyzeck" and Homer’s "Odyssey," the work is a meditation on violence delivered with pervasive sense of the uncanny.

Many scenes are imbued with charm and childlike innocence. Laurie Van Wieren and Megan Mayer, for instance (on opening night, the performers were all women who are well known in local movement-theater and postmodern dance circles), played a theatrical children’s game with perfect timing and physical expression. Costumed in Gestapo-style uniforms, they could have been bored guards or children playing dress up.

The women of Mad King Thomas (Tara King, Theresa Madaus, Monica Thomas), in their fancy getups, initiated friendly conversations with the audience on politics, then turned on each other. Other performers (also wearing military garb) might be shouting one minute, effusively greeting us the next. Images of an older man and a young long-haired boy are projected on white laundry hanging in a backyard, and white venetian blinds in an empty room.

Throughout the piece, guns are ever present. As is the point-blank shooting — execution style — of one character by another. The first time the (empty) gun clicked, a frisson of fear zapped my nervous system. While the feeling lessened through the hour-long work, that moment of click, followed by a head tilting sideways, never lost its horror.

"He Woke Up ..." 8:30 p.m. Friday-Sunday, through May 31; 142 Cambridge St, St. Paul; Tickets $18, $14, $10; 800-838-3006.