A look at the world through puppetry, dance

A white-faced, tender-looking puppet sits at a window grappling with fear at facing the outside world. As he ventures out, step by step, his greatest worries are realized: The world is a dangerous place. Yet it's also wonderful.

"Wonderboy," performed by the Joe Goode Performance Group in collaboration with puppet designer Basil Twist, has tugged at the heartstrings of audiences in Houston, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. It's coming to the Blackman Theatre at Northeastern University tomorrow.

"The puppet is this sensitive little creature who sits at the window staring out at the world, and the dancers, they are the world," says Joe Goode by phone from his hotel room in Boston.

"At times they are so beautiful and sensual, he trembles looking at them," says Goode. "He wants to be like them, so loving and caring. At other times they are frightening and they are taunting him. In all, they are the real people he wants to be, but is terrified of being."

Goode worked with Twist a couple of years ago on Paula Vogel's play "The Long Christmas Ride Home" in San Francisco. Goode wasn't interested in puppets at first, but quickly came to realize their beauty and vulnerability.

"We decided we would do something together," says Goode. "I came up with 'Wonderboy,' a story of a sensitive person who has a very particular view of the world. He was like us. As artists we grew up as little queer boys thinking we could never fit in, only to discover we had some power. People were interested in what we had to say."

March 14 at 8 p.m. 617-373-4700, www.centerforthearts.neu.edu

Eddie and May sit inside a ramshackle motel on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert talking, lovingly and violently, about their twisted love affair. Sam Shepard's "Fool for Love," which starts previews at New Repertory Theatre tomorrow, is an intimate one-act play that blurs the lines between love and hate, romance and desperation, all the way to the bitter end.

"I was a little frightened of doing a show like this on such short notice. We had 10 days of rehearsals," says Timothy John Smith, who plays Eddie, a rodeo guy and bull rider careening toward the end of his career. As he drinks, he desperately tries to hold on to May, who has moved on.

"Fool for Love" is one of Smith's favorite plays. "It's such a good read, really funny and sexy, guttural and very painful," says the 34-year-old actor. "I want to be a rodeo guy, with these awesome one-liners and making out with this girl," he adds, laughing. "This show is good. Great ending, which I can't tell you. We just put things in high gear, learned our lines quickly. There's no looking back."

Through April 5. 617-923-8487, www.newrep.org

Nature Theater of Oklahoma's "Poetics: A Ballet Brut" is a 65-minute dance piece by a New York theater company that has earned rave reviews. It's coming to the Institute of Contemporary Art this weekend.

"It's about transforming everyday movement into dance," says Pavol Liska, one of the troupe's co-creators. "It's about taking what we take for granted and making it spectacular."

The avant-garde group, which has also adapted Odon Von Horvath's "Kasimir and Karoline" and created a collage out of Greek texts called "Fragments," here uses intense physicality to turn the way people sit, stand, and sleep inside out - and into a high-energy show.

Tonight through March 15. 617-478-3103, www.icaboston.org

Trinity Repertory Company, led by artistic director Curt Columbus, characterizes its 2009-10 season as embodying "the theme of second chances." It kicks off with Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret" at the Chace Theater (Sept. 11-Oct. 11), followed by Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night" (Jan. 29 - March 7) and Neil Simon's "The Odd Couple" (April 9-May 9). The Dickens holiday classic "A Christmas Carol" will run from Nov. 20-Dec. 27.

The Dowling Theater will host "Shooting Star" by Steven Dietz (Oct. 16-Nov. 21), a romantic comedy about the reunion of two college sweethearts; "Dead Man's Cell Phone" by MacArthur "genius" grant winner Sarah Ruhl (Feb. 19-March 28), a comedy about death and living on through modern technology; and "The Syringa Tree" by Pamela Gien (April 30-May 30), about the relationship between a black and white family under apartheid.

Information: 401-351-4242, www.trinityrep.com

The American Repertory Theatre has added three performances to the run of Samuel Beckett's "Endgame" at the Loeb Drama Center.

The additional performances are March 20 at 8 p.m. and March 21 at 2 and 8 p.m. Information: 617-547-8300 www.amrep.org

Correction: Because of incorrect information supplied to the Globe by Trinity Repertory Company, the Stages column in yesterday's "g" section misstated the closing date of its 2010 production of "Twelfth Night." The show will run from Jan. 29 to March 7.