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, original music, and intricate handmade sets, Frohardt gives shape to the cultural and personal curiosity she 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. This genre-defying, live-cinema project is her innovative attempt to reconcile the predicament of being born a soul in a body raised in Walmart.