Behind the Lid (2014)

A documentary film of the immersive 2007 theatrical experience co-created by avant-garde playwright/performer Lee Nagrin and master puppeteer/performer Basil Twist. Passing just a few days after its first performance, Nagrin's final work looks back on her own life through the realm of dreams. Shot on 16mm film, the camera, in place of the intimate live audience, journeys with her effigy and Twist through a constantly astonishing hand-made world as Nagrin's memories expand, open, and reveal in a fantasia of puppetry, spoken word, ambient soundscape, music and light. This visual poem is a deeply moving elegy to Nagrin, and the dwindling landscape of rarified theater and film.