A RAFTER OF CRANKIES

November 28th & 29th, 2025

At Green Mountain Orchards, 130 W Hill Rd, Putney, VT

Sandglass Theater's A Rafter of Crankies returns to Green Mountain Orchards for the 11th consecutive year! Performances will take place on Friday, November 28, at 5 PM and 7:30 PM, and on Saturday, November 29, at 5 PM and 7:30 PM. This event will be part of the Putney Craft Tour over Thanksgiving Weekend.

Crankies are panoramic scrolls that are “cranked” through a box, creating an experience reminiscent of an analog movie or a comic strip paired with a song or story. Together, they produce performances that are charming, often wildly funny, or strikingly haunting. While traditionally associated with Appalachian folk culture, today’s crankies embrace cultural, musical, and artistic expressions that are contemporary and as unpredictable as the weather!

Heating will run before and between shows; the temperature in the building should be somewhere between outdoors and cozy.  Bring layers! Cider and baked snacks will be available by donation.

And why a Rafter of Crankies? Rafter is the group name for turkeys (just as fish group in schools or geese in gaggles).  Just look at the ceiling of Green Mountain Orchards and you’ll see why the name fits for a group of crankies as well.  And on Thanksgiving weekend, what better way to tie the rafter together than with the traditional meal and a crankie performance!

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Tendrils & Tongues

Join Mycelia on a journey of following the tendrils and listening to the tongues of those fungal and deciduous non-human allies and what advice they might have to offer us in these current times!

  • Emily Schubert is an interdisciplinary artist working mainly in the worlds of puppetry, performance, sculpture and collage. She is currently based in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont and hails from Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the curator and organizer of the annual Baltimore Crankie Festival and has hosted many “puppet slams” or short form puppet cabarets including her self-produced Experimental Puppet Happenings (2022-2025). Emily is inspired by the fantastical and the everyday and how these shape peoples’ perception of the world. She is enthralled by the emotive power and depth of expression achieved through puppetry and storytelling and believes that within these realms lies a source of real-life magic that is deficient in much of our daily lives! Emily is accompanied by Ian Mansfield, her partner in life, puppets, and apples. Ian is a cider maker and all around apple enthusiast.

The Artist

An original folktale told through illuminated cut paper and shadow puppetry, thinking on the folk artist’s capacity to transform love and grief, and their participation in continuing on living tradition.

  • Maisie is a Philadelphia based shadow caster working and playing within communities like Spiral Q, Studio 34, and The Open Kitchen Sculpture Garden, and is currently involved in the collective re-kindling of puppet slams and makers meetups for Philly puppeteers.  Their shadow play simmers together everything from cut paper to traditional printmaking, overhead projector, crankie theater, stop motion animation, and cello.  They also love developing shadows, puppets, sets, and costumes in collaboration with fellow storytellers in film, dance, music, and theater.  Maisie has studied puppetry in moments of academia and reckless abandon like Bread & Puppet Theatre, The University of Connecticut, the Chicago International Puppetry Festival Workshops, and the National Puppetry Festival.  They also work to encourage everyone's voices through puppetry and toy making workshops around town.  Their teaching practice focuses on disrupting our day to day with play and self expression, and calling us in to our intersections and our collective liberation.

Wisher's Well 

Jump and turn into a world of mystery and adventure following a young seer who finds herself at the bottom of the Wishing Well.

  • Erica E. Warren (she/her), local to Minneapolis, is a Black and CHamoru graphic artist, illustrator and puppeteer. Predominantly a shadow puppeteer, Erica explores her storytelling arts through rod, table top and cart puppetry as well. Her puppetry reflects and often features characters of mixed race, or characters who find themselves in situations of feeling excluded for being different in some way. Incorporating bittersweet elements of real life with a goal of self empowerment.

    Erica has participated in Monkeybear Harmalodic Workshop (2022) and Sandglass Puppetry Intensive (2024). Her works have been featured in New Puppet Works (2023) and Minneapolis Puppet Lab (2024). Her puppet works have been shown in Minneapolis and Baltimore Crankiefest (2022-2025), Full Moon Puppet Show (2022), the Weisman Art Museum (2024) and New Native Theatre (2025).

Possum

In Possum, Eric and Ines offer an unusual love song, depicted in the trials and tribulations of some of Vermont’s undomesticated animals.

  • The piece is inspired by events in our own backyard, combining Eric’s songwriting with Ines’ evocative imagery to create little emotionally resonant journeys.  Anna Patton will join on clarinet.

    Ines Zeller Bass and Eric Bass are the founders of Sandglass Theater, which they directed for 40 years before passing the leadership to Shoshana Bass, their youngest daughter.  As Sandglass Theater, they created more than 25 productions that toured internationally.  They are recipients of numerous awards, including the 2010 Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.  As crankie artists, they began creating crankies in 2013.  Ines Zeller Bass has blended evocative illustration with a puppeteer’s dramatic sensibility, in creating images that are original and delightful. Eric Bass has added his own perspective as a theater director, helping to make each individual crankie a dramatic and musical event.

Thanks To Our Supporters

A Rafter of Crankies is presented in Collaboration with Green Mountain Orchards, with support of the Center for Cultural Vibrancy.