When Urinetown co-creator Greg Kotis went to see a production of Antigone at a theater festival in Transylvania, it got him thinking about writing something that was about a story even more ancient. And what's more ancient than the Greeks? Single-cell organisms on the bottom of the primordial sea.

That was the seed that began Yeast Nation, a new work currently being performed by Kotis and collaborator Mark Hollmann in conjunction with San Francisco's Ray of Light Theatre. As the Chronicle's Chad Jones tells us, the 14-year-old theater company's artistic director Jason Hoover heard tell of the Urinetown creator's latest work in progress and decided to approach them about doing it here. They agreed to come out for a week-long workshop, and now the play is in production at the Victoria Theater through November 1.

Like the creators' earlier work, Yeast Nation is absurd and satirical, and a review of the 2011 production at the New York Fringe Festival said, "This is the rare satire that knows exactly what it’s doing and commits to it.”

Per the descriptive copy, "In the year 3,000,458,000 B.C., the salt-eating yeasts are the only living creatures on earth, and they’re up against a food shortage, a strange new emotion called “love” and the oppression of a tyrannical king. When the king’s dreamer of a son ventures out of the known yeastiverse, the yeasts’ story — and ours — is changed forever."

Tickets can be found here, and the show is performed Wednesday through Saturday, with extra matinee performance on Saturdays, through November 1.