A balmy summer night in Woodlawn Park: Dogs barking, a pickup baseball game, parents chasing kids. In the distance, a synthesizer hums a familiar theme song. A man in a 23rd century Starfleet uniform -- black boots, mustard-colored shirt, triangular insignia -- strides through a makeshift doorway.

"Space, the final frontier," he intones to an imaginary audience. "These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. ..."And these are the cheesy lines, short-short skirts and futuristic gadgetry of "Trek in the Park," which begins tonight and runs over three consecutive weekends. The actors are re-creating the "Star Trek" episode "Amok Time," one of the best-known from the late 1960s TV series' second season. It's the one where Spock battles Kirk as part of a bizarre Vulcan mating ritual and gets all emotional when he realizes he hasn't really killed him.

Trek in the Park

It would be easy to perform it as parody, a condescending little nod to the earnest hopes of the Space Age. But the actors here are playing it straight, with the seriousness of a Willy Loman on Broadway or a Mercutio in Ashland.

"These characters are every bit as famous and resonant as Shakespeare," says Jesse Graff, who plays Spock. "Per capita, if you sat down with somebody and said, 'Tell me about Macbeth and tell me about Captain Kirk,' you would get the same number of people knowing what you were talking about."

Graff got the part because his roommate, Adam Rosko, was launching a new theater company called Atomic Arts and decided to do an episode of "Star Trek" for the inaugural production. Rosko plays Kirk. He asked Graff to play Spock. A third friend, Paul Pistey, plays Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. All are part-time actors and met last summer while playing bit parts in a local production of "Robin Hood."

All are also in their late 20s or early 30s, which means their Trekker cred consists of "The Next Generation," "Voyager" and the early "Star Trek" movies before the plots got stupid. They generally agree that "The Wrath of Khan" is the most excellent movie but this summer's reboot of the franchise shows similar promise. Rosko collects comic book action figures and Graff would love to play Batman someday, but none of them speaks Klingon. Or have memorized the blueprints of the Enterprise. Or attend Star Trek conventions.

"I'm not blind to reality. I don't live in my mother's basement," says Pistey, who works as a banker. "I think it would be a lie to call myself a Trekkie."

Rosko doesn't consider himself a hardcore fan, either. But his mother, Marge, is, which is why she sewed all the costumes and donated some of her collectibles to the show. Rosko's sister Amy, who lives near Woodlawn Park, is co-producing and is in charge of the budget -- about $1,000. Friends built Kirk's captain's chair and the wood door frame; the audience will have to imagine the transporter and the consoles that Sulu, Chekov and Uhura use to help run the ship.

Last week's dress rehearsal at the Northeast Portland park attracted some curious onlookers, a neighborhood kid the cast seems to have adopted as its mascot and a confused bicyclist who rode through the middle of the set and parked his bike during a dramatic standoff -- proof that this is not a production of Shakespeare in the Park. Characters communicating with the Enterprise were played by an actor wielding a bullhorn offstage. An actress doubling as T'Pau, a high-ranking member of Vulcan society, sang the operatic opening as the synthesizer made spooky noises. Spock's pointy ears looked a little fake, but Graff said he'll have better ones by opening night.

Decades of syndication have imprinted Star Trek's characters and the actors so firmly onto our cultural consciousness that it's disconcerting to see anyone else try to take the place of the over-emoting William Shatner, the coolly aloof Leonard Nimoy, the crabby DeForest Kelley, who played McCoy. Even as the original cast limps through sequel after sequel, growing older, grayer and paunchier, we still remember them in their prime.

But after a couple of run-throughs of "Trek in the Park," Rosko's skinny Kirk gets more confident, his presence more intimidating. Graff doesn't look at all like Nimoy's Spock, but his unusually long fingers make the "live long and prosper" salute look realistic. Pistey, showing the merest bit of chest hair, slips easily into McCoy's cranky demeanor and tendency to dramatize: "If you don't get him to Vulcan within a week, eight days at the outside, he'll die! He'll die, Jim!" Pistey says, and for a moment, you can see Kelley's world-weary face.

Even the supporting characters are well-cast: Uhura wears an impressive wig and a sleek pair of man-killing boots. Chekov makes an admirable stab at a Russian accent.

Hardcore Trekkers who fill multiple Wikipedia pages with minutiae may quibble with some of the play's details. But assuming the audience loves "Amok Time," the cast has already chosen its next episode. The Enterprise's original mission, after all, lasted five years. That leaves four summers to go.

-- Lisa Grace Lednicer; lisalednicer@news.oregonian.com