Early in the week and well into the dark of a damp winter Oakland evening, Quantum Theatre artistic director Karla Boos and videographer/editor Buzz Miller are holed up in an editing room at Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

Mary Mervis Patricia Tallman, left, and Jeff Monahan in Quantum Theatre's "The Human Chair." 'THE HUMAN CHAIR' Where: Quantum Theatre at Reese Building, 925 Penn Ave., Downtown. When: Through Feb. 5; Wed.-Fri. 8 p.m., Sat. 5:30 and 9 p.m., Sun. 2 p.m. Tickets: $22-$26 (limited student tickets $15); 412-394-3353.

For what? Quantum's new play, of course.

"Shut up ..." Boos advises a video recording of herself directing an actor on one of the room's three monitors, before settling back to critique more raw footage, gesturing with a green plastic tumbler bearing an inch of red wine.

For Boos, casually (and politely) advising Miller over his shoulder, "The Human Chair" marks not just another of Quantum's innovative choices of performance space, or the opportunity to incorporate video elements in a stage production, but a rare occasion for her to wear yet another hat -- that of playwright.

The play, which opened yesterday, is Boos' own adaptation of a short story by Japanese detective fiction author Edogawa Rampo, who adapted his pen name from Edgar Allan Poe. It tells the tale of a sort of Trojan chair, a beautiful and unsuspecting author, and the creepy voyeur who resides inside the chair.

"This story was living in my mind," said Boos. "People ask me which I chose first, the place or the play, and this is a case where they work so simultaneously together. I had been attracted to this little story ... and Rampo, it seems like he drops these little droplets into the bucket of your imagination that you flesh out in your mind."

Foremost among those "droplets" was the eerie concept of that chair itself, especially when combined with the space she selected for the performance, the Reese building, in the 900 block of Downtown's Penn Avenue.

In its previous life, the second- floor space was a phone bank employing more than 100 callers seated in a series of concentric rings with their manager in the center. Now, refitted as a performance space, the former office puts the audience members in the position of the workers, seated in arcing rows, ringed out from the stage.

With most of the lights down, the room has a blue cast, the surfaces and stage sides toothpaste green and everything moving toward a distinctly muted tone of institutional design. Pile upon pile of Compaq desktop computers, monitor-less, half of their removed CD-ROM trays gaping like black slotted maws, are everywhere, supporting tables, flanking the stage, even bearing an onstage samovar, like so many rounded decorative garden wall bricks.

The desks before patrons' seats are punctuated here and there with functional computer monitors, which along with two larger projections flanking the stage, display the video segments integral to the performance.

"For this play," said Boos, "we really need both elements. The audience will see the live actors and they'll experience the back story of the characters in a voyeuristic way ... on the monitors that are right close by, intimately, as well as in these bigger projections. ... It works, dovetailing the live action in with these images.

Which is where Miller comes in.

Having first explored film work in 1985, seeking out Pittsburgh Filmmakers while still a student at Carnegie Mellon University, he continued it while studying anthropology, then biology, eventually becoming a technician at the Carnegie Science Center.

The self professed "AV geek" ("audio-visual" for the uninitiated) has concentrated on experimental, non-narrative film, often with inanimate subjects.

"Working with humans ... has been exciting -- exciting and challenging," said Miller, who also co-designed the elaborate projections and video for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre's "Henry" last summer.

"This show has been a good deal more narrative than anything I've done in a long time."

Boos also directs. With her input at the production's two location shoots and the strong associative sense that Miller's experience with experimental film provides, the video portions should complement yet not overwhelm the live aspect of the production.

The layers of storytelling possible with such a format are considerable. There are no less than three opportunities for Boos' direction, for example: The actors are directed at the shoot, the editing is directed as the footage is cut, and the actors are directed on stage.

For Boos, the layering also echoes the themes of isolation, voyeurism (both for the watcher and the watched), as well as issues of public and private space, and technology's promise to bring us closer together against the ever- present sense that it often accomplishes precisely the opposite.

While, in a manner of thinking, all theater is a complex collaboration among artists, their influences, music and performance space, "The Human Chair" presents a unique opportunity to lay bare these many factors for audiences.