Herb Alpert Award-winner Robin Frohardt — whose immersive, multimedia experience The Plastic Bag Store captivated audiences at MASS MoCA in 2024 — returns to the museum for a preview of Shopping Center of the Universe, a theatrical work of speculative nonfiction.

This new work in development, grounded in reality yet deeply reflective, offers a poetic meditation on our relationship with the natural world. Blending puppetry, prose, live music, and intricate handmade sets, Frohardt gives shape to the cultural and personal curiosity she has experienced growing up surrounded by big box stores. Frohardt reframes the parking lot as part of the ecosystem, rather than separate from it: tree roots break through asphalt, condensation from an air conditioner wears a hole in a sidewalk, and a flock of birds crash-lands, mistaking the lights on the pavement for the surface of water. Frohardt’s genre-defying, live-cinema project is her innovative attempt to reconcile the predicament of being born a soul in a body raised in Walmart.

About the Artist:
Known for her rich aesthetic and highly detailed constructions, Robin Frohardt is an award-winning theater and film director. Her narrative-based film, puppetry, and sculpture use recognizable materials, often trash, to create richly detailed worlds that make magic of the mundane and highlight the trivialities of daily life. Her theatrical work has earned her a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, multiple Jim Henson Foundation Grants, and the Herb Alpert Prize. Her play The Pigeoning, hailed by The New York Times as “a tender, fantastical symphony of the imagination,” debuted in 2013 and continues to tour at home and abroad. Her follow-up project The Plastic Bag Store premiered in Times Square in 2020 and has since toured to Los Angeles, Chicago, Adelaide, Austin, and North Adams. Following The Plastic Bag Store’s six-month run at MASS MoCA, it was recognized by Hyperallergic as one of “The Top 50 Exhibitions Around the World in 2024.” Frohardt’s films have been the official selections at The Telluride Film Festival, Aspen Shortsfest, the One Earth Film Festival, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM).

Prices include all fees, which are waived for MASS MoCA members.

Produced by Pomegranate Arts