Ninety percent of all puppet life originates in the eyes. Either a puppet engages her fellow puppet, directly and convincingly, eye to eye or, like Romeo and Juliet, they fall over dead on stage in each other’s arms. In order to be animate, a puppet must always know exactly what she is looking at whether it is another puppet, the sky, a sound or in the default position, downward into her own thoughts. The moment the puppet forgets this, she betrays all her wooden charms and becomes a blank presence staring into the void.
And, no one knows all this better than Billy, sitting how far back in the tenth row. As distant as he maybe, he has a miraculous ability of following those minuscule dots we call the puppet’s eyes. And, for the play’s sake, those eyes better be on the beam.