Medieval dramatists weren’t much for subtlety. If you had a character who you wanted to represent perseverance or repentance, you named that character Perseverance or Repentance. These were the “morality plays,” the era’s favored artistic style for instructing people about righteous living and confronting the mysteries of existence. This week, Meat & Potato Theatre introduces its contemporary spin on a 500-year-old tradition.

The double feature of short productions begins with Judgment Day, in which God unleashes the apocalypse, “much to the surprise of some demons (says a press release), who suddenly find themselves unemployed. In Everyman, a flawed and sinful human facing her mortality must figure out how to find a good life in a corrupt, materialistic world.

Just like his predecessors of the Middle Ages, playwright/director/Meat & Potato guru Tobin Atkinson uses allegory to explore a question that remains relevant today: How can theater teach us something about what it means to be human?

Everyman & Judgment Day @ Rose Wagner Center Studio Theatre, 138 W. 300 South, 801-355-2787, May 27-June 13, $20. MeatandPotato.org