PUTNEY — Sandglass Theater's signature event, A Rafter of Crankies, will take place on Thanksgiving weekend in the atmospheric big hall of Green Mountain Orchards, 130 West Hill Road. Performances will take place on Friday, Nov. 25, at 7 p.m. and on Saturday, Nov. 26, at 5 and 7:30 p.m.
This year's crankie artists include annual favorites Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, Anna Patton, and Brendan Taaffe. Donald Saaf will be rejoining the crew with something brand new. And, for the first time, Mary Fraser will bring one of her beautiful crankies to the event.
The term Crankie refers to the way that the spool handles are cranked, to forward the panorama on a scroll of paper. The term is often credited to Peter Schumann, founder of Bread and Puppet Theater, but the form goes back centuries.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, street singers often delivered ballads of murderous deeds with large panels that illustrated German Moritat, or morality songs (think “Mack the Knife,” from the Kurt Weill/Bertolt Brecht musical, Threepenny Opera).
The crankie's long illustrated scroll also became a means of presenting travelogues and scientific panoramas in salons and meetings during the 19th century. They were then called moving panoramas. Today, crankies are strongly associated with Appalachian music and tradition.
As Brendan Taaffe writes in Sandglass' new book, The Time Before the Glass Turns Over, “Let's start with this: crankies are a form of magic. By this I mean to say that they are an antidote to this age of digital saturation that - by means of the mechanism being so readily apparent, of the simplicity of the machine, of the crinkle of the paper as it is wound from one crank to the other - grounds us in the real, in the shared breath of creating magic in a small room.”
Turkeys, our traditional bird for the Thanksgiving meal, group in rafters, a collective noun akin to a gaggle of geese or a school of fish. When Eric looked at the roof of the big hall at Green Mountain Orchards, he immediately knew what the collective noun is for Crankies.
Last year, the annual crankie weekend moved to Thanksgiving weekend, to be part of the Putney Craft Tour, and the venue moved to the orchard. The aroma of the apples adds yet another sensation to this seasonal performance. Zeller Bass will have special mini-crankies for sale, with scrolls ready for painting, drawing, or collage.
Heating will run before and between shows; the temperature in the building should be somewhere between outdoors and cozy. Viewers are encouraged to bring layers Coffee and baked snacks will be available by donation. Masking is encouraged, but not required.
Tickets are $16 for general admission and $14 for students and seniors. For more information, visit sandglasstheater.org.