Last Friday night, Carlos Caballero and Elizabeth Doud, under the visionary directorship of Carlos Diaz from Cuba’s Teatro El Publico, surprised the audience with their beautifully intense{C}and idiosyncratic portrayal of two cross-species lovers (a human and a mermaid) in their play, “If You’re Going to Pull a Knife, USAlo.”

Presented by FUNDarte, a Knight Arts grantee, in collaboration with Miami Light Project and Miami-Dade County Auditorium, as part of FUNDarte’s Miami On Stage series, the play opened with Doud flapping her mermaid tail and Caballero, dressed as a greased-up petroleum worker, on opposite sides of the stage. The opening scene set up the push/pull dynamics between the two characters that only intensified as the play progressed.

The play, which is based on collaged excerpts from Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” “Not I,” “Endgame” and “Happy Days,” was performed in English (Doud) and Spanish (Caballero). Performing Beckett can be a challenge. Collaging several Beckett texts together into one performance and then performing it simultaneously in Spanish and English is a challenged squared. But it paid off.

There’s one line in the play, culled from Beckett’s “Endgame,” that best sums up the theme of “USAlo:” “You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that.” Caballero and Doud communicated this simple truth through their characters: We (humans) aren’t going anywhere so we must deal with each other and our environment.

What made “USAlo” a success was Caballero and Doud’s connection with each other and their connection to the audience. This was amplified when the two performers invited the audience to dance with them on stage. All of a sudden the play turned into a surreal ballroom.

“It was raw, surrealistic, poetic, touching and humorous,” said Gio Lester. “This is performance art,” said Juan Carlos Perez-Duthie. “Something we need more of in Miami.” And I agreed. Caballero and Doud brought the knife to the table. They used it. They took a stab, a risk, at creating something new out of something old. It worked.