When performance artist and director Lee Nagrin died on June 7 at age 78, her final work, “Behind the Lid,” became her eulogy. It had always been intended as a summing-up piece, autobiographical and dreamlike, but now it will have to suffice as her final word. For a woman who understood her position outside the mainstream, one who, in her program note, referred to herself as a “sibyl,” “Behind the Lid” faithfully represents her strangeness, her sureness, her sincerity, and her vanishing way of life. It’s also a remarkable construction in its own right.

Nagrin sat at the front row of theater’s great generation — attending Jerzy Grotowski performances in Venice, meeting up with Joe Chaikin at parties, and producing Eugene Ionesco for the first time in America. Her own work won an Obie, and although middle America never learned her name, many object-theater creators and choreographers still cite her multimedia experiments and obsession with animal totems. The Silver Whale Gallery on Bleecker street, Nagrin’s live-work space for decades, also played host to a number of New York artists and puppeteers, including puppeteer Basil Twist, who presented his first full-length production there in 1995. Mr. Twist cocreated “Behind the Lid,” lending his seams-out, homemade puppetry to Nagrin’s fantastical montage.

Mr. Twist is most famous for his wordless water-ballet “Symphonie Fantastique.” But here Mr. Twist actually appears as a companion figure to Nagrin — who is played by a life-size puppet — as her familiar, Virgil, and comic foil. The choice does not always work — Mr. Twist can be an overly careful performer — but it does relieve the experience to see someone living holding the hand of Lee, the puppet. Without him, the ceremony would seem unbearably lonely.

An audience limited to 18 stands in a blue-lit antechamber. There, overlapping voice-overs describe “the pearl diver,” who dives down into the past to bring back the coral and gems, changed by their long submersion. “The process of decay can be one of crystallization,” Nagrin intones through a recording, before Mr. Twist and She-La (Nagrin’s 5-foot-6-inch puppet alter ego) lead us into the performance space beyond. The long, brown tunnel burrows into the space and then seals up behind us as we march toward our seats.

The seating platform then rolls slowly forward, tracking through scenes impressionistically remembered. Projections and marionettes reenact an early play about Auschwitz, written when Nagrin was only 14; we visit a Makah American Indian reservation, represented as a looming, speaking totem pole; we watch foot-long planes on creaking overhead tracks drop the bomb on Hiroshima; and we pity poor, misguided Einstein as he does a capering jig in apology. It’s a bumping ride through a personal history, with tableaux vivants by Jan Svankmajer.

Despite the tight confines of the subterranean gallery, Mr. Twist and Nagrin manage several surprises: The staff throws the audience a mid-performance wine and cheese reception. A jolly, toy-like scene of Nagarin’s childhood — complete with fussing parents and a Starship Enterprise — plays under the open sky, though we never crossed through a door. And the final moment occurs in some limitless, darkened kiva that could not possibly exist on Bleecker Street.

There, another large puppet of Nagrin, this time bearing a projected image of her face, waits to tell stories. Unfortunately, Mr. Twist — who has done beautifully in a number of comic bits — now returns as a giant bird-god, intoning the preamble to the Constitution. But before that bit of silliness can unhinge the spectacle, “Behind the Lid” has distinguished itself as more of a ritual than a show. Mr. Twist, in feathers, demonstrates his devotion. Nagrin, even now, affirms her love of country. And the audience pays homage to a woman and a way of working that will be sorely missed.

Until July 13 (21 Bleecker St., between Bowery and Lafayette streets, 212-868-4444).