The two plays were put on by Icarus Falling, a Lansing-based professional theater company, and ran last weekend in Lansing. Director Jeff Croff said their focus lies on relationships between people.

“While their titles are pretty provocative, they really focus on the interaction and relationships,” Croff said. “In ’Bondage,’ the struggle lies in how to face a world that’s constantly changing.”

“In ’Perversity,’ you have four people struggling over how to date and interact with the opposite sex.”

The shows ran back-to-back, each about 45 minutes long, with an intermission between them.

Kevin Knights, a Lansing resident, plays Mark in the two-person cast of “Bondage.”

“The underlying current is this relationship we have has been going on for a while. It's mentioned that I’ve been her client for over a year.”

The struggle lies in the resistance of the dominatrix, Terry, played by Laura Croff, and the submissive, Mark, to admit they really want love.

“I’m really in love with her, and she wants to be in love with me,” Knights said. “By the end of this, it’s left up to the audience as to whether we’re going to give it a shot as a real relationship.”

After intermission, audiences viewed “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” a play by David Mamet.

This four-person show focuses on the trials and tribulations of the predatory dating scene during the 1970s.

Daryl Thompson, a Lansing resident, plays Danny in the show.

“The main plot is the love story between Dan and Debra, and then outside of that is the relationship that Dan and Debra have with respective friends, that works to pull their relationship apart, ” Thompson said.

Thompson described the show as a dark comedy with parts that are both funny and disturbing.

“It’s a social commentary on how things go wrong, and how misogynistic attitudes can end up hurting people, on a very personal and societal level, ” he said.

Last fall, Icarus Falling debuted with a run of “True West. ” The play, by Sam Shepard, was first popularized by the Steppenwolf Theater company of Chicago, with John Malkovich as the lead.

Icarus Falling was founded on the premise that people in Lansing are hungry for less traditional theater, Croff said.

“We do theater that is provocative in ideas, in staging and less-than-standard fare, ” he said. “The intent is to provide a venue for scripts that aren’t normally done anywhere else. ”