When at a new play, sometimes it can be fun to “name the influences.” When in those crucial formative stages, whom does a young playwright turn to for inspiration? Something like Will Eno’s “Thom Pain” makes no bones about its kinship with Edward Albee’s work, but Mr. Eno’s maturity ensures the relationship stays pretty oblique.

The playwrights of the two new pieces currently playing at P.S.122 hew more closely to their models. Clearly, Young Jean Lee has been up nights absorbing Mac Wellman and Richard Maxwell. Her “Pullman, WA” seems a little like a waking dream by both men, filtered through a self-help mentality and weeded of allusion. Kyle Jarrow, on the other hand, has been using that time listening to David Bowie and watching bad movies. It’s a blow for education everywhere that Mr. Jarrow’s “Gorilla Man” is so much more fun.

At the top of “Pullman, WA,” bright fluorescent lights beam down on stage and audience alike. This is a “set it and forget it” design – there isn’t a soul in the stage manager’s booth or at the light board. Pete Simpson walks out, wearing his street clothes, and starts to address us. He, unlike the rest of us, has figured out how to live. Without a hint of affectation, and a sincerity that disarmed even the chucklers, Mr. Simpson issues a set of simple, surprisingly caring tips.

All his gentleness has a strange effect. Because of the knowing cachet that has oozed into P.S. 122’s walls over the decades, his message of “love thyself” doesn’t just surprise, it menaces. Mr. Simpson looks so completely himself, and makes so much eye contact, that he doesn’t seem controlled by the bounds of theater. What shoe is waiting to drop?

Unfortunately, Ms. Jean Lee can’t bear the suspense either, and brings out two more characters. Thomas Bradshaw and Tory Vasquez (grinning like a maniac) troop out to give increasingly trippy versions of Mr. Simpson’s speech. Ms. Vasquez wants us to think about a green field with unicorns and well-endowed donkey gods – a paradise reminiscent of Mr. Wellman’s “Jennie Richee” – and Mr. Bradshaw thinks he’s an angel.

These “better parts of ourselves,” as Mr. Simpson introduces them, do battle. Religion, wishy-washy imaginative healing, and common sense all compete for the best way to make an audience get right with itself. But too few ideas drive too much language – though lovely images continue to surface throughout.

Ms. Lee’s imitations of her idols are necessary parts of an emerging process, but between the “non-theater,” bleached-out space of a Maxwell play, and the gonzo lyricism of a Wellman rant, Ms. Lee’s own voice gets obscured. I, for one, would like to hear it.

***

Kyle Jarrow’s “Gorilla Man,” on the other hand, has self-confidence to spare. I encourage everyone to see the shows on the same night (it’s cheaper that way). Not only do they share a similar motto of self-realization, but it’s nice to see how fast Mr. Jarrow’s team can set up a drum kit.

Where “Pullman, WA” fetishizes nothingness, the “Gorilla Man” team goes all-out. They mock up a Big Top, bring the piano and drums center stage, and spare no expense on their costumes. This is big, bloody, ridiculous theatricality – and nothing will prime your appetite for it like an hour with Young Jean Lee.

Little Billy (Jason Fuchs), just 14, wakes up with something disturbing under the covers. He’s showing surprising hair growth on his hands – even for a pubescent boy. His mother reacts calmly: She pulls a gun on him and screams a sad song about her ruined marriage to a Gorilla Man.

Billy is turning out just like his father, and while hair and fangs aren’t necessarily turn-offs, the murderous rage that comes with them landed Papa Gorilla in jail. Billy escapes, sets off on a quest to find his imprisoned father, and learns all about frightened mobs along the way.

Mr. Jarrow doesn’t shy away from the political. This is the man who advanced the “poisoned crab” scenario in “President Harding is a Rock Star” and wrote “The Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant.” That said, he rather over emphasizes a section in which a political leader (Burl Moseley) gets the townspeople to turn on a “common enemy” to explain away their economic problems. It slows the show down just a hair, and every moment not spent listening to Matt Walton’s Gorilla Man yowl lyrics like “Go ahead, hate me, I’m what God made me” is a tragic loss.

Director Habib Azar and the cast have all caught Mr. Jarrow’s disease – there’s a unity of vision and insanity here that’s exciting. Mr. Jarrow himself, tricked out in striped coat and shiny shoes, presides from the piano, and Perry Silver makes indispensable snarky comments from behind the drums. Every time little Billy looks down and ready to cry, he sets up a little beat because, “You know, I feel really uncomfortable watching someone cry onstage. Personally, I’d rather watch him sing.”

“Pullman, WA” and “Gorilla Man” until March 27 (150 First Avenue at E. 9th Street).