PUTNEY-Live and lovely events — like Putney’s Sandglass Theater’s 19th Winter Sunshine Series, which launches this Saturday — may be more essential now than ever before.
As described in a press release, this annual tradition, “a warm beacon during Vermont’s coldest months,” is “rooted in joy, creativity, and community” and brings folks of all ages together “for cozy, homemade fun through the timeless art of live puppetry.”
The Commons spoke recently with Jana Zeller, who has been working with Sandglass since she was a teenager. Having “officially” joined the staff last year, the daughter of Sandglass founders Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass is now Sandglass’ youth program coordinator, as well as a performer and co-producer.
“I have a lot of irons in the fire over here,” she says.
With her sister, Shoshana Bass, puppeteer and Sandglass’ co-artistic director, Zeller has been co-producing the winter event for the past 10 years.
Offering two shows every Saturday in February, Zeller said the Winter Series represents a range of puppetry traditions and styles.
“We really pay a lot of attention to whom we invite,” she said. “Our artists are award-winning leaders in our regional puppet community. We feel it’s special that we have a venue here where we can invite our audiences and connect them with such quality work.”
This year’s Winter Sunshine opens Saturday, Feb. 7, with Brad Shur’s Cardboard Explosion from Poughkeepsie, New York. “This is a super imaginative show,” said Zeller. “Everything is built out of cardboard and [three different] stories get assembled in front of the audience with some audience participation.”
Modern Times Theater, from Hardwick, Vermont, will be featured Feb. 14. “They’re bringing a vaudeville-style show,” explained Zeller. “Extremely funny.”
The “Baffo Box Show: A Compact Cardboard Comedy,” is performed inside a one-of-a-kind suitcase stage. “This fast-paced, all-ages comedy blends classic hand puppetry, object manipulation, junk music, and sharp humor,” according to the show’s publicity materials.
On Saturday, Feb. 21, one can see Puppet Motion’s “Party Animals, which Zeller said is “a brand-new hand puppet show coming from Sarah Nolen in Boston.” The news release elaborates: “Five furry friends face their biggest challenge yet: throwing their very first party. Through rock ‘n’ roll music, hand puppetry, and heart, this lively show explores self-expression, friendship, and joy.”
The series closes Saturday, Feb. 28 — school vacation week — with Tanglewood Marionettes’ “Fairy Circus,” which Zeller calls “traditional, beautiful, hand-carved marionettes in elaborate painted sets.”
This showcase features more than 20 marionettes performing dazzling tricks to beloved classical music.
‘Laughing together and breathing together’
Zeller said that “this series is really close to our hearts. It’s community. It’s cozy. People get their hot chocolate and they bundle up to come here even in the worst weather. They pile into the theater and it just brings so much laughter and joy and enchantment — just a sense of belonging together and experiencing this together.”
When asked about the relevance of Sandglass’ work in these times of widely-sourced threats to free and creative expression, Zeller said that people “need live, interactive, creative, imagination-sparking spaces where you experience texture, you experience life, [you hear] sound, you see movement, you see somebody messing up and working through it and laughing together and breathing together.”
“More than ever, in our digital era, we all know all the circumstances we’re working with now,” she continued. “And I feel our work just speaks to the imagination and really gets people of all ages — children of all ages — fired up.”
Of its tangible impact, Zeller said, “We often have kids walking out of here with their own ideas of what they’re going to build at home — to make their own — because with puppetry you can make it yourself. You can make it out of cardboard, you can use a bottle with an apple on the top as a puppet, it doesn’t matter. There’re so many ways to engage with this medium.”
Zeller also teaches puppetry in school residencies.
“I can’t believe how valuable it now seems to just use scissors and tie a knot,” she said.
“All these super-basic things” that might seem completely unimportant “suddenly feel like they are becoming absolutely crucial to keeping connected to our humanness,” Zeller continued. “Using our hands and our imagination — that connection of bringing an idea to life.”
Of Winter Sunshine Series audiences over the years, which Sandglass is always “working on growing,” Zeller notes “they’re really sweet — sort of quintessential Vermont. And intergenerational. Sometimes we have three generations attending. We’ve seen kids grow up and then bring their own kids. It’s wonderful.”
Critical funding
The series is funded by grants and local sponsorship. “In these times that are hard for arts organizations, we cherish the support and partnerships we have in the community,” Zeller stresses, touching on the current state of the arts.
“Theaters, presenters, we can’t run on just selling tickets. So we do rely on external funding and with the closing of the National Endowment for the Arts, we definitely have seen shortages that affect our budget. But other people are stepping up, it seems,” she added, pointing to philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The former wife of Amazon titan Jeff Bezos has “donated a huge amount of money to the New England Foundation for the Arts, and that benefits so many places,” Zeller said. “The hope is that more private people step up.”
But, Zeller hastens to add, “we’re lean and mean and scrappy. And so we will always make our programming work. And that’s really what it takes.
Describing her sister as “really amazing,” she says the two are “creative thinkers and doers.”
“So we just have to put our extra-resourceful creative thinking on,” Zeller said. “We’ll find ways for sure.”
Winter Sunshine Series shows are offered each Saturday in February at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at wheelchair-accessible Sandglass Theater, 17 Kimball Hill, Putney. Ticket prices range from $8 to $12 and, since seating is limited, advance purchase is encouraged at sandglasstheater.org/winter-sunshine-series.
This Arts item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.