Concept Package · Original IP
A derelict marionette theatre has started advertising shows again. You have come to watch one. You will be in it.
The Concept
The theatre has been shut for years, but the posters are new: clean paper, sharp ink, pasted over the rot. The guest arrives holding a ticket to a show that is genuinely about to be performed — and the route to their seat runs the length of the workshop, through every stage of how a marionette is made, in order. The maze is the guest being made into a puppet, and nobody ever says it out loud. The route says it.
The conversion has five stages, mapped to the rooms: measured, jointed, strung, finished, performing. Every wound is a manufacturing step. The worst thing in the building is Stage 2 — limbs rebuilt with wooden ball joints, the face completely untouched, still awake, asking for help.
The Puppeteer is never seen. A warm, looming voice through the building's own speakers — welcoming, courteous, stern when interrupted, and always certain of how the evening ends.
Look & Feel
Entirely warm: no blue, no green, no daylight, no electric light anywhere. Everything is lit like fire or candle — the warmest-looking maze imaginable, and the most unpleasant, and those two facts are related.
The Guest Journey
Room by room
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01The Rotting Vestibule
Front of house, decades gone. A rack of marionettes hangs where the coats should be
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02Sawdust & Sizing Room
The templates pinned to the wall are the shape and size of a person
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03The Articulation Ward
A woodworking shop. Limbs racked by size. One of them asks you for help
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04The Tangled Rigging
A corridor hung so densely with lines you push through it. Things hang in it
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05Varnish & Paint Vats
A figure is being finished — and goes quiet partway through
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06The Master's Stage
Every seat is occupied by a puppet. The heads turn. The show begins overhead
Moments
The Cast
Stage 0 — Stock. A beautiful object, no horror at all
Stage 1 — Sized. The work has just begun
Stage 2 — Articulated, face untouched, still awake
Stage 3 — Strung
Stage 4 — Finished. No distress left, which is the horror
Design Notes
The signature sound
Wood on wood. A marionette's joints clacking — heard in every zone before anything is seen. In the auditorium, an out-of-tune theatre organ takes over.
Trained movement
Marionette movement is a real performance discipline: weight in the wrong places, limbs arriving before intention, the head lifting last. It is written into every casting note.
Props and performers
Stage 0 props are dressed identically to Stage 4 performers. A rack of hanging marionettes contains one that is breathing.
Concept imagery generated with AI from the author's written design direction. Story, world, route, cast and design are original work.