Scripts full of acrobatics, lore and licentious acts on string, characterize Chris Skeens? morality spectacles with marionettes. The performances arrive, in general, upon an audience with no conception of what kind of behavior to expect from an art-house marionette. Rest assured, this is not the show for your niece. The unsuspecting audience is marauded by unforeseen forces, ancient gods and peons with both trivial and the most serious of dilemmas.

The marionettes are at turns maudlin, adventuresome, pious, all are involved in achieving Skeens? epic narratives. He has these ?galactic ideas,? says collaborator David Lloyd Rabig, ?I try to narrow him down and put a structure around it.? Skeens? ideas are sometimes inspired by the galactic, most mostly the stem from his extensive studies and travels. Skeens? has studied puppetry in India, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and New York.

After the two short performances by Skeens and Rabig at previous Beekiller events, Out Of Time (debuting October 10) occasions their first full-length performance with a troupe, The Somnamble. The Somnamble are a makeshift crew of friends and artists including Mr. Clown, Matt Corey, Liam Hurley, Ira Lopez and Matt Park. Out of Time will be performed in at experimental theater, chasham, where Skeens is an artist-in-residence, and technical liaison.

A more complex and fully-formed work-in-progress, Out of Time is about getting out of time, as a concept, not the hourglass-sand-running-down kind. Says Skeens, is "about the relationship between the action and reality of the concrete situation and the awareness by everyone involved--except for the puppets--that there's something else going on. There is some other consciousness at work and there are other patterns being played out. We understand that there are hands pulling the strings. But the puppets are not seeing that; it's sort of a transcending, awakening story about the puppets realizing there are puppeteers. About looking for a larger structure in the universe." Or, as Rabig put it, "it's about a guy, Guy, who's looking for the right way to live."

Skeens found puppetry after work as an actor, then set designer. He found it the least inhibited medium to house his intense creative energy. "You're working in this little box with marionettes and you're able to control the scene in a way that's enormous," Skeens says, "I have big ideas and I love that even with a budget this stuff can happen for real." The impact on the puppet?s miniscule world can be devastating when it makes its way out of the box and often, to drive that point home, the players escape its bounds.

Skeens began his studies in a library, when he found a book on juggling Indian puppetry and he set off for India. While learning the basics of living there, like buying a banana, Skeens? met with a crew of fascinating and singular people. His first instructor, Rishi Chatravedi (which means four vettas, I'm told), was a high-caste Brahman who had renounced everything to become a communist party activist and became disillusioned with the cause. Fourveta introduced Skeens to a roving tribe of "gypsy folk-artist/dancer/snake charmer puppeteers."

For two weeks, Skeens mentored on-and-off with the gypsies who lived communally and earned money selling straw horses to tourists, as snake-charming had become semi-illegal. One "sketchy" but ?brilliant? man in the commune who apprenticed Skeens was Bengali Bhat, who had traveled the world as a puppeteer. "He spoke Japanese, Swedish, English, German, Hindi, Malawi, Mugnai-but couldn't write at all," Skeens recalls.

Skeens then apprenticed at a slightly more traditional program at the Indian Folk-arts Museum in Udipur, which is a ?big marionette center.? For a month, he carved, sewed and painted. He created two puppets and collected more. He returned with them, Typhoid Fever and myths; all of which will appear in Out of Time.

Indian myths heavily influence Out of Time. The puppets allow a simplification of Skeens? themes. Using ?metaphors of string, of control, of vibration of string? Skeens buries himself into a concept. ?I try to get my head around my own self being outside of time, or anyone being outside of time. Non-time. What would that be?? Taking the high concept, Skeens and Rabig build a narrative support. With Out of Time, he returned to Hindu Gods and their metaphors ?of many heads, many eyes-many visions, simultaneous vision, multiple hands--having all this control and ability?each hand controlling a string.?

"We try to really beat our ideas into the ground. To make sure that they stand up before we go ahead," says Rabig.

"But we don't provide an answer," Skeens interjects, "We beat them into the ground, but we don't come up with a crystallized thesis."

"As long as what we're doing resonates with us, we feel like people are going to watch it and get something out of it, whether it's what we intended or what we see it as or what we perceive," Rabig continued.

Another influenced in Skeens? narrative came while working with Richard Foreman and other downtown currents. "I think puppetry and Foreman style are very connected," he says, he points to the string metaphors, adding, though, that they are using them in different ways. He also finds a connection to puppetry in current downtown theater acting: ?There?s a certain, removed and almost uber-marionette-style acting, where the actor is apart from their character. Spiritually separate from their lines. People are turning that around now and being these dead things--like standing and delivering as a way of doing things."

"What I like about the puppets is that they don't have anything else to give. You know what I'm saying--they have these specific ways that they're designed--you know a puppet just moves and whatever you say, that's what they're saying--there's no believability, there's no emotion or sub-text. If the script is sad you go ?oh oh oh? and that's all you know. And that's what it is."

*Beekiller will sponsor the Out of Time?s debut with a rock-extravagant celebration on Friday, October 11th at 8pm. See the events listing for details.