PUTNEY — The puppets are back.
From Sept. 11 through Sept. 20, Sandglass Theater presents its ninth international Puppets in the Green Mountains Festival: Walking to the Borders. Artists from Canada, Cuba, England, Germany, Mexico, and all around the United States will gather in Brattleboro and Putney to perform puppet shows for adults and children of all ages.
This 10-day celebration also features a sumptuous festival gala, fringe events, and community meals, all offering audiences unusual opportunities for connection and interaction with the artists.
Puppets in the Green Mountains is widely celebrated as the signature event of Sandglass Theater, the internationally known theater company specializing in combining puppets with music, actors, and visual imagery. Since 1982, Sandglass's productions have toured 24 countries, performed in theaters, festivals, and cultural institutions, and won numerous international prizes.
Sandglass has produced Puppets in the Green Mountains biannually since 1997 (with a few exceptions: this time it took three years) as away to celebrate the artistry and diversity of puppet performances around the world.
But this year marks some firsts. Eric Bass, Sandglass's co-artistic director, explains:
“For the first time, all events will be centered around a theme. While still entertaining and exciting, performances this year also will focus upon current social issues such as immigration, race, and human rights. One of our aims with this festival is to interconnect arts and issues. This is not to say that all art is necessarily political, but we feel that our programming needs to resonate with relevance in our communities - local and worldwide.”
Why the change?
“In the beginning, Puppets in the Green Mountains was our way to show people that theater with puppets is an unusual and unique art form, as we emphasized variety and cultural identity,” Bass says. “Puppet theater and performance remains comparatively invisible, yet after being in the area for so long, Sandglass has let the people in southern Vermont get to know the art form pretty well.”
He continues: “So it's time for us to move the festival in a new direction. Form and content are still important, but now we are considering the context with which work is created, adding an extra component: that of puppet theater addressing art as social change. Sandglass itself has been moving in that direction for the past few years.”
The 2015 Puppets in the Green Mountains: Walking to the Borders will open with American puppeteer and performance artist Paul Zaloom's White Like Me, a one-man satire depicting a society in which whites are rapidly becoming the minority.
Theater Waidspeicher from Germany will present its elegant rendition of Romeo and Juliet, the archetypal story of difference, conflict, and transformation that here will be told wordlessly.
Glover's Bread and Puppet Theater will transform Living Memorial Park in Brattleboro with a sweeping, larger-than-life performance called The Underneath the Above Show.
John Bell and Trudi Cohen, of Great Small Works in Boston; Facto Teatro, of Mexico; and Barbara Steinitz, of Germany, will perform Made of Paper, a show done completely in paper.
Kimi Maeda will perform Bend, a performance in sand.
The British company Thingumujig Theatre will present for children of all ages Hullaba Lulu. Created by Kathy and Andrew Kim, the show features exquisite puppetry, live music, and songs.
Raven Kaliana will offer Hooray for Hollywood, a powerful film that utilitizes spare compositions and expressive, handmade tabletop puppets to represent experiences of sexual exploitation and human trafficking from a child's point of view.
Quebec performance artist Magali Chouinard will spontaneously appear throughout the town during the days of the festival dressed as a mysterious woman in white.
¡Bienvenidos a Vermont!
In perhaps the most special “first” of all, Sandglass is hosting a Cuban theatrical company: Teatro de las Estaciones, which will present El Patito Feo, a version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Ugly Duckling. Perfect for all ages, it's told with colorful, two-dimensional puppets and exuberant song and dance that explores how it feels to be different.
According to Bass, this will be Teatro de las Estaciones's first Brattleboro - and first American - festival appearance.
“The company is very famous in Cuba for their work for young audience. I find it interesting that they have taken a classic European story but refashioned the material with their own strong cultural experience. In a production is beautifully designed by Zenón Calero, their approach is really different from any other version I've seen,” Bass explains.
Bass adds that he feels that simply bringing a troupe from Cuba is a statement itself about cultural exchange and social justice.
“Many of the reasons for the the embargo against Cuba made sense, but there is no evidence that it had any effect except to seriously punish the very poor Cuban people.”
Speaking of justice
There is something else new at this year's festival: For the first time, Puppets in the Green Mountains will feature a keynote speaker. The honor goes to Erik Ehn, acclaimed playwright and director of Writing for Performance at Brown University, who will speak to the relevance of theater (including puppet theater) “to necessary and effective change in a world in need of social justice.”
Bass calls Ehn “quite extraordinary”:
“A highly regarded playwright, he has written 17 plays about genocide. He also has led tours of Rwanda. What's more, he loves puppets and often works with them. With such an inspiring speaker, I feel his talk will be as strong a piece of art as any of the other performances in the festival.”
Ehn also is known for proposing the Regional Alternative Theatre movement.
Discussions and workshops complement the schedule. Bass says these events will give audiences the chance to interact with the concerns raised by the artists in public dialogues with performers and nationally known activists.
Included are Shura Wallin of the Green Valley Samaritans, an organization that rescues migrants from the Arizona deserts; Christal Brown, formerly of Urban Bush Women and now chair of dance at Middlebury College; and Julie Lichtenberg, director of The Performance Project in Springfield, Mass.
Brown bag lunches and D-Generation
“There will be five brown bag lunches at Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, hosted by Jon Potter,” Bass adds. “Each will include one of the artists and an activist in the area with which the show deals. For instance, Paul Zaloom's White Like Me deals with white privilege, so he will be joined by Christal Brown as they discuss race in America. Audiences will be invited to join conversations that normally don't get to happen.”
Sandglass Theater will perform at the festival its acclaimed D-Generation, a show about the effects of dementia on individuals, families, and communities. This is the last time the production is expected to be performed in the United States in the forseeable future.
“Sandglass has been touring D-Generation for the last two years,” says Bass. “We have taken it to Chicago, Montana, Tennessee, Georgia, and the Southwest - really, all over the country. We have done 14 weeks of residencies. As we are winding down this major project, the festival will be the last chance to see it. Ending the project is a thrilling feeling: a closure of some kind, of something accomplished.”
But D-Generation may be just beginning a new life abroad.
“Sandglass has recently been offered an opportunity for D-Generation to leave the country: to participate in the Suspense Festival in London, England, from Oct. 31 to Nov. 1,” says Sandglass Administrator Cathryn Lykes. “Suspense is one of the premier puppetry festivals in Europe, and we are very excited for D-Generation to be seen there.”
Lykes adds that, given the trip's costs for transportation, accommodations, food, and freight, “we found we needed to raise $6,500 to make it possible.”
Sandglass therefore has created a GoFundMe campaign, D-Generation in London!
“An incredibly generous donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, recently contributed $4,000 and has encouraged Sandglass to pursue online fundraising in order to raise the remaining $2,500,” Lykes explains. “All donors will be named on our website and in the show program.”
To contribute, visit www.gofundme.com/e925argk.