About the Event

For the first time ever Sandglass will be presenting a program featuring all our currently touring original works for our home community. This includes legacy pieces, so named in honor of Sandglass Founders Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, who in part originally created some of the work that will be presented, as well as original works created by Sandglass’ next generation of Puppet Theater creators. Each show will include a special post show community puppetry taster offering a glimpse into Sandglass’ approach to creating theater with puppets. As a touring company that spends much of our year performing in other parts of the world, this series is a response to requests from our hometown audience to perform our work locally. Come celebrate the living tradition of puppetry in Vermont!

We are excited to be presenting our current repertoire to our local community:

Isidor's Cheek
August 2nd, 11am & 2pm
In the Sandglass Theater Tent, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney, VT.

Isidor’s Cheek is an adventure told in song and miniature puppets on a revolving table.

Conceived by Ines Zeller Bass
Designed and Performed by Jana Zeller
Directed by Eric Bass
Music composed and recorded by Peter Tavalin

So begins the song, which begins the story, which begins the adventure: One day, something drives Isidor from his little gray existence. His cheek runs away, and Isidor must search around the world to find it again: a world of color and beauty, as well as loneliness and even danger. Inspired by a German children’s book.

Puppet Crimes
August 7th and 8th, 7pm
At Sandglass Theater, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney, VT.

400 years of puppetry survival.

Conceived and Performed by Jana Zeller
Co-writen and Directed by Eric Bass
Puppet Heads created by Zak Grace
Puppet Costumes created by Ines Zeller Bass
Music Composed by Anna Patton

This dark comedy highlights all the glory of traditional, antiauthoritarian, counter-cultural puppet theater. Puppet Crimes, an original hand puppet show created by Jana Zeller, is a raucously hilarious satire about what it takes for a common puppet to survive for 400 years in the face of war, tyranny and economic oppression. Traditional German hand puppet heroes Kasper and Gretel struggle to survive in an old shack on the margins of society. As the centuries pass through their little puppet booth, war is always raging and Kasper tries to avoid getting blamed, arrested and drafted, yet at every turn this petty puppet is made the scapegoat for larger crimes. In a grotesque world of gun-runners, outhouses, and a declining monarchy, Kasper (with the humor and wit of the common man) ducks out from under authority and manages to survive another 200 years. The third character in this spectacle is the villain Dietmar, corrupt emissary to the king who deals in weapons and bullies Kasper with his gun wielding authority. Each scene poses a grotesque circumstance with a comic twist that explores the tradition of Kasper’s character and its timeless relevance to today’s world.

Oma
August 9th, 11am & 2pm
In the Sandglass Theater Tent, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney, VT.
Performed by Jana Zeller and Shoshana Bass

A joyful story of celebration, generations, and storytelling in yarn

Conceived and Performed by Jana Zeller and Shoshana Bass
Directed by Ines Zeller Bass
Music composed and recorded by Molly Gawler and the Gawler Family Band

Oma says that knitting is not just pom pom hats and sweaters. Oma's knitting contains whole stories! This family show by Shoshana Bass and Jana Zeller is an intergenerational tale that revolves around Grandma or “Oma." It is her birthday and all are preparing for the celebration. While the grown-ups manage work phone calls, playdate logistics and other such tasks, the children get into mischief with party decorating, present wrapping, and cake baking. Finally they all gather around for one of Oma's stories told in yarn. One character emerges from the tangle of wool and nearly ruins the party. But not to worry, all ends well at Oma's house.

When I Put On Your Glove
August 14th & 15th, 7pm
At Sandglass Theater, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney, VT.

A piece about belonging, memory and inter-generational dialogue.

Performed and Created by Shoshana Bass
Creator of the original Autumn Portraits, Eric Bass
Directed by Gerard Stropnicky
Choreographed by Alison Mott
Sound design by Maria Pugnetti
Design and Construction by Ines Zeller Bass
Music by GlassDuo

When I Put On Your Glove is a puppetry, dance and spoken narrative piece that explores a daughter’s relationship to her father’s work building upon a premise that puppets are containers of memory. In it, a daughter explores what it means for her to slip into her father’s art – and not just the form, but the actual pieces. This work addresses universal questions of belonging, childhood, fear of loss, death and the complicated nature of navigating generational artistic legacy. The passing of these puppets into new hands marks a pivotal moment of generational transition for Sandglass Theater. It is an engagement with what legacy means in the field of puppetry; how an art form endures and transforms as it is handed to the next generation; meeting the voice of the past with the voice of the present, and singing it into the future.

Feral
August 29th & 30th, 7pm
At New England Youth Theater, 100 Flat Street, Brattleboro, VT.

A piece about Women and Wolves

Thank you to the women that offered their voices and stories to our research and development period: Yuchen, Jelena, Anna, Shari, Mary Allen, Alice, Leyna, Claudia, and Mariam

Have you heard the joke about the she-wolf that is bitten by a werewolf and turns into a woman? No? This production presents the punch line of this strange and dark farce of domestication. Feral invites audiences on a woman’s journey as she experiences the tension between her intuitive knowledge and learned societal behavior, captured by an allegorical transformation into a werewolf. As the woman tries to reintegrate this wild voice, she wrestles with her sanity while being diagnosed with a growing feral condition. Within the protection of her domelike dress, domestic acts are disrupted by ancestral visitations and dreams of wolves.

Tickets will go live in June, watch this space!