Amanda Palmer is an expert in remaining motionless. She earns her living as a human statue — during the warm months, you can often spot her in Harvard Square in her role as " The Eight-Foot Bride. " She also plies her trade in more offbeat locations. When the newest Bread & Circus had its grand opening down on Memorial Drive, Palmer and three others were hired as flesh-and-blood art installations. " It was really strange to see a living statue in the tofu section of a whole-foods store, " she marvels.

So perhaps her latest artistic effort is some kind of kinetic yin to her quiet, unmoving yang. As founder of the Shadowbox Collective, she is shepherding the avant-garde theatrical production Hotel Blanc to the stage of the Middle East on February 6, 10 and 13. Carefully timed and choreographed movement is a crucial element of the play, which combines spare dialogue, intricate lighting, and video projections — as well as a blurred, morphing sense of time and space — to tell its story of an obsessive-compulsive soap salesman who checks into a motel room. There, he does — and doesn’t — encounter other characters whose stories unfold around and, at times, seemingly though him and threaten to destroy his sanity.

But there’s more to it than that, with slices of 1930s Germany and ’60s America superimposed as if they were concurrent films unreeling. And then there’s the hour-long tragicomedy’s connection to British cult-rockers the Legendary Pink Dots. Palmer used Dots songs as one of the sources of Hotel Blanc’s ignition. After explaining her concept of the production to collaborator Claire Davies, an actress, they listened silently to seven LDP tunes and a few others by Edward Kaspell, jotting down ideas. " Their music is so incredibly theatrical and cinematic, " Palmer says.

When they were done, they shared what the music had inspired and wrote the framework for Hotel Blanc. Then over four months, the cast fleshed out the story line through improvisation — a demanding process. " We wanted to stage it at the Middle East to draw a younger, not necessarily theatergoing audience, " Palmer explains. " We’re trying to find an audience with perhaps even more open minds than the usual avant-garde theater audience. We’ve been disappointed with the avant-garde theater and performance-art scene in Boston, which we think should be a response to more traditional theater. In general the performance-art audience expects very little from performers, and we wanted to do something that would blow people away. "

This is Shadowbox Collective’s third major staging, following Palmer’s 1994 play Asylum and 1998’s The Last Show on Earth. In the meantime there have been several street-performance events, and she also devotes time to her band Dresden Dolls. She plays piano and sings, Brian Viglione drums; she notes that " we’re sometimes called ‘Brechtian punk.’  "

Palmer’s taste for inventive rock also accounts for the bands who will follow the performances of Hotel Blanc. This Wednesday, Thalia Zedek, Reverend Glasseye & His Wooden Legs, and Anny Luckless close out the night. On the 10th, after a 3 p.m. matinee, All the Queen’s Men, Bee & Flower, and Barbez finish up. And on the final night look for Neptune and Palmer’s own Dresden Dolls.

Hotel Blanc plays at the Middle East downstairs, 480 Mass Ave in Central Square, this Wednesday, February 6, at 8 p.m., next Sunday, February 10, at 3 p.m., and next Wednesday, February 13, at 8 p.m. Tickets are $15; call (617) 864-EAST.