Puppet Theatre Company's Avant-Garde Show So Abstract Audience Doesn't Realize It Has Started

The premiere of 'Becoming (Un)Becoming,' a new work by experimental puppet theatre company Liminal Objects, encountered an unexpected obstacle Saturday night when the audience failed to realize the performance had begun and remained in the lobby for the first forty-five minutes of the eighty-minute show. The piece, described in program notes as 'a meditation on the liminal space between object and presence, exploring the puppet's ontological status through stillness, breath, and the choreography of absence,' opens with an extended sequence in which three puppeteers stand motionless behind a scrim, holding unfinished puppet armatures. 'The stillness is the point,' said director Margaux Void. 'The audience is meant to confront the puppet before it becomes a puppet. The wooden form. The potential. The not-yet.' The audience, comprising approximately sixty ticket holders, interpreted the dimly lit stage and motionless figures as 'the set before the show starts' and congregated in the lobby drinking complimentary wine. 'We thought there was a delay,' said attendee Richard Helm. 'The stage looked ready but nothing was happening. Someone said the performers were still getting set up. We had another glass of wine. After forty-five minutes, an usher came out and said, "The performance is more than halfway through." We went in. Three people were standing very still holding sticks. We sat down. They continued standing still.' Void expressed frustration that the audience 'missed the entire first movement, which is the most important because it establishes the phenomenological framework for the second movement, in which the armatures are assembled — also very slowly.' Post-show audience feedback forms contained a recurring comment: 'I'm not sure anything happened.' Void has framed one of these and hung it in her studio, calling it 'the most profound review I've ever received.'