The first in a series of works that will play in the Twist Festival D.C. through May 6, master puppeteer Basil Twist’s “Petrushka” at the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s Lansburgh Theatre is a retelling of the famous 1911 Ballet Russes work. That ballet tells the story of a puppet show in which the puppets come to life after the show, suggesting that they have real emotions, rather than being just scraps of wood and fabric.

But Twist has taken on the additional challenge of doing the same work with puppets and making their post-performance characters seem to be as real as humans. And he succeeds, making their personalities, not just their movements, credible. The entire production is set to the music of Igor Stravinsky’s Sonata for Two Pianos, played magnificently by Julia and Irina Elkina. To put the audience in the mood for the main story, Twist creates a prologue of images, some abstract, some realistic, that flit across a huge, elaborate gold-framed rectangle set high on the Lansburgh Theatre stage.