His return to one-man performance is serious business

“It’s about a man who postpones his suicide so he can visit his father on his deathbed,’’ Kuntz says by phone, adding, “It’s hilarious! Already you’re laughing!’’

That’s just the beginning of “The Salt Girl,’’ which centers on a man named Quint and his family’s defining tragedy.

“They’re kind of haunted,’’ Kuntz explains. “When his mother is pregnant with him, his 6-year-old sister disappears. She goes across the street to play on a swing set, and someone takes her and she’s never found again. Her body is never found, and his parents are accused of being involved in it somehow. And this leads to other tragic events for his mother and father and him.’’

The Boston Playwrights’ Theatre production, now in previews, runs through Nov. 22.

Kuntz made his name in part with several one-man shows he wrote and performed in the late 1990s, which he describes as mostly collections of character monologues, some funny, some more serious. He considers “The Salt Girl’’ a more developed work.

“It follows this man and his journey with his dad, and it’s really quite serious. It’s about death and dying. There’s some funny things in it, but it’s really pretty freaking sad and scary,’’ Kuntz says. “It’s weird to think of it as a comedy or a tragedy or anything. It’s just a story I found compelling.’’

The staging is more than the one chair he had in the old days, too. Director David R. Gammons’s design includes a wall of 26 video screens displaying what Kuntz describes as stock footage illustrating what’s happening inside Quint’s mind.

Kuntz acted in a Gammons-directed 2007 production of “Titus Andronicus’’ and enjoyed it so much that he delayed “The Salt Girl’’ a year until the director was available.

“While I was working on it, there was that [news story about a] girl who had been gone for 18 years and then they found her. It was kind of weird that happened right when I was in the middle of it, because there is that possibility [Quint] holds onto, that his sister is alive somewhere, even though she would be in her late 40s,’’ Kuntz says.

Not surprisingly, he lined up something a little lighter for his next role.

“I’m playing Peter Quince in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ for the Actors’ Shakespeare Project,’’ he says, “so that’ll be sprightly and full of fairies and mischief.’’

At Boston Playwrights’ Theatre through Nov. 22. (Kuntz does a talk-back with the audience after Saturday’s 8 p.m. performance.) Tickets: $30, discounts available. 866-811-4111, www.bostonplaywrights.org

CWT co-directors Jennifer Johnson and John Peitso, who are married, scored a hit last winter with their unusual interpretation of Homer’s epic. A cast of two, they told the story of Odysseus and Penelope in just over an hour, entirely in and around a 15-foot rowboat, using clever stagecraft and music.

“We are trying to develop the ideas, the archetypes of the epic, into more human terms,’’ Johnson says. “Like the Cyclops, you think of this kind of monstrous violence . . . but what would be the desperation, the fear, the outrage of that character that would make him such an alone, desperate monster?’’

Good reviews after opening weekend helped turn the last two weeks of the three-week run into sellouts, Johnson says. Tonight “The Odyssey’’ returns, running Fridays and Saturdays for three weeks.

“When you work at a little theater like ours, it’s really difficult to turn people away - we work very, very hard to get people here,’’ Johnson says. “We wanted to develop the work a little bit more . . . and give people an opportunity to see it who didn’t get a chance to see it last time.’’

In the audience during the run will be a few invited guests, representatives of other venues, primarily in New England, that might take on such an unusual piece, Johnson said. “The play is kind of portable because the [boat] is kind of portable.’’

Runs through Nov. 21 at Charlestown Working Theater, Charlestown. Tickets: $20, discounts available. 866-811-4111, www.charlestownworkingtheater.org