Performing theatre in public spaces but unseen, where people are less conscious of their surroundings and what's actually in there, has become central to socially engaged art in recent years. This paper considers what participatory theatre has to offer by way of alternatives to this drive for ever more engaged and influential effects in a town called Hualien on the east coast of the island Taiwan. Through analysis of Night Market Theatre (2014) and Night Walks (2015), both produced in Hualien, alternative ways of conceptualizing performance in public places, somewhere between an institutional aesthetic and popular theatre, are considered and explored. While Night Market Theatre was performed at a street night market by a group of Taiwanese theatre practitioners that led by British artist Joshua Sofaer and Night Walks consisted of a visit to a derelict area of the town center organized by a young local director Shuhan Tzeng, they both emphasized participation by members of the audience. Looking to participatory theatre as a method for rethinking the emergence of a theatrical aesthetic in a marginal town offers rich new perspectives on the issue of remembrance and interaction with past public history. I argue that these performing practices from Hualien signal a radical reevaluation of how we recognize public performance, as a way not only to discover those unseen surroundings, but also to introduce a new way of making theatre.