Theater is about suspending the audience's belief in reality, knocking down that fourth wall and creating separate relationships with people seeing the show from different physical directions. It's about encouraging the audience to accept scenarios in an artificial time and place.

		'A Wrinkle in Time' Where: Works Theater, Carnegie Science Center, North Side When: 7 p.m. Fridays; 2 and 7 p.m. Saturdays; 2 p.m. Sundays; through May 1 Tickets: $10-$19 advance or at the door only at the Carnegie Science Center box office; information 412-771-7373

What better place, then, to stage a complex production about traveling through time and space than the Carnegie Science Center?

"A Wrinkle in Time," based on Madeleine L'Engle's award-winning science-fiction book, is the result of a unique partnership between Prime Stage, the Carnegie Science Center and the Pittsburgh International Science and Technology (SciTech) Festival, a nine-day event of interactive displays celebrating innovations in science and technology in the Pittsburgh region and beyond.

A month before ABC-TV premieres a movie starring Alfre Woodard that's based on the popular children's story, Prime Stage's adaptation attempts time travel in real time.

"Science fiction lets you do anything in the world," says director Lynn DeBree. "Well, not the world -- in the universe."

When a physicist gets trapped in a time "wrinkle" of his own discovery, his desperate children elicit the help of several entities in human form to travel to many time frames and worlds, find him and bring him home.

Mirroring the multidimensional story, "Wrinkle" is staged on several planes simultaneously. In the center of the Science Center's Works Theater stage, parts of the show are performed in the round. In the aisles, the performance takes on thrust-stage dimensions, while actors work in a proscenium setting near the theater's walls. Surrounding the space above eye level, 89 projection screens help to create the energy of time and space travel.

"My journey has been a lot like the kids' journey [in the play]," says DeBree. "The rules change every minute. We haven't gone the traditional route in the staging process. We're breaking down all of these theater conventions -- sometimes the action moves right through the audience."

Science Center personnel created some of the high-tech effects that help DeBree and her 10-member cast, four of them children, to suspend the audience's belief in the physical realities of space and time.

"I think 'A Wrinkle in Time' speaks really well on a couple of different levels," she says. "The fantasy element gives you a lot of freedom . . . challenging what we see as our boundaries, what we see as possible. But at the heart of the story are the feelings of this young girl for her father. It's a complex show, but I think a 9- or 12-year-old might get it before adults, because kids are more willing to suspend their belief in reality."