At the Onion Cellar, a dark nightclub in Gunter Grass’ 1959 novel “The Tin Drum,” those who can’t cry cut onions. The tears may not be real at first, but once things get rolling, the emotional release turns genuine.

At the Zero Arrow Theatre, a venue that, with its neon sign and clean hallways, hardly resembles a cellar, Amanda Palmer and Brian Viglione—better known as The Dresden Dolls—are going for a similar effect.

In collaboration with cast and crew members from the American Repertory Theatre (ART), The Dresden Dolls and director Marcus Stern have recreated Grass’ subterranean nightspot. “The Onion Cellar” will run through Jan. 13, 2007.

The show’s unusual construction—it was written, choreographed, and set to music simultaneously—has produced diverging opinions from its creators. Stern and Viglione say the experience has been an exciting one that can work well, in theory. Still, Palmer worries that the show might be a failure.

‘HITLER’S ASSHOLE’

For The Dresden Dolls, who got their start in and around Boston, the production is a homecoming of sorts. Palmer says she’s been coming to Harvard Square’s Café Pamplona for years, and one song on “A Is For Accident”—the Dresden Dolls’ debut album—was recorded in Sanders Theatre.

After meeting at a Halloween party in 2000, Palmer and Viglione started giving concerts—primarily in Cambridge—and honing their style.

Taking inspiration from the cabarets of Weimar-era Germany, Palmer and Viglione adopted an aesthetic and on-stage persona that is by turns dark, satirical, theatrical, and a little threatening.

“No matter what it was in reality, our collective fantasy of it was this place where artists, thinkers, people were...creating really original art, thoughts, philosophies, politics,” Palmer says of Weimar Germany.

Werner Sollors, the Henry B. and Anne M. Cabot professor of English literature, says the Dolls aren’t far off—the satirical edge of Weimar-cabaret performances was razor-sharp.

“There were quite a few singers who poked fun at the Nazi movement,” Sollors says. “There was a famous cabaret singer—his name was Max Hansen—and he sang a famous song that was basically about Hitler’s asshole.”

Sollors says that part of the appeal of a cabaret in economically-depressed German cities was its low production costs. “All you need is a basement and a few chairs,” Sollors says.

In other words, a place like Grass’ Onion Cellar.

UNNECESSARY CHANGES?

It’s unclear whether “The Onion Cellar” is a cabaret, a rock concert, or a straight play, and that’s part of the point.

“None of us had ever attempted to do anything like this before,” says Viglione.

While the original concept for “The Onion Cellar” is Palmer’s, the script itself was written “by committee,” according to Viglione.

Stern agrees that the project has been an unusual one. He says constructing the show has been “a process where we literally change the script every day.”

Stern says the egalitarian nature of the process has been exciting. “The cast has been incredible as collaborators on this journey,” he says.

But Palmer says the accumulation of small changes has altered the show entirely.

“The concept was just that I would...create a really wild performance art night that would include the band but that would also star the audience itself,” Palmer says. “There would be a spotlight on the audience almost throughout the entire show, and it would be less of a play and more of an ongoing environment into which you would step for a couple of hours.”

Now, Palmer says, “It’s been 100 percent changed.”

She says that audience participation has been completely excised from the production. “The tone was supposed to be really scary and wonderful and challenging, and now it’s not,” Palmer says. “Now you’re watching a play and a rock band.”

The idea of combining a rock show and theater tends to make rock musicians nervous, and the Dolls are no exception.

Viglione articulates a question that he says has preoccupied the cast and crew: “How do we infuse this story with the energy of a rock show without it becoming a full blown ‘Tommy: The Musical’ thing?”

According to Stern, “The Onion Cellar” bridges the theater/rock divide without devolving into caricature.

“I think our notion is that because rock shows are really happening and theater by its very nature is pretending to create a story, the question became, ‘Can we create events that in some way or another are actually happening,’” Stern says.

“I think we really believe in theory that it can work,” he concludes.

CURTAIN UP

For Palmer, a collaboration with Stern may have been doomed from the beginning.

“That was sort of my own naïveté to agree to work with a director who I barely knew at all,” she says. “I think while [Stern] agreed with the concept in theory, in practice I think it was just too scary.”

Stern and Viglione say that the collaborative approach has been both exhilirating and fruitful, but Palmer thinks that the lack of an authoritative vision may have muddied the production’s progress. “There are many things that you literally cannot achieve sitting around a table trying not to offend anybody,” she says.

“What you end up with is a nice, vanilla kind of compromise.”

—Staff writer Richard S. Beck can be reached at rbeck@fas.harvard.edu.