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Sandglass Theater 8/12/22
- 410 reads
Vidhi Salla interviews Shoshana and Eric Bass of Sandglass Theater about the 2022 Puppets in the Green Mountains festival. Sandglass Theater is thrilled to announce the next edition of the Puppets in the Green Mountains (PGM) international festival, September 9th-18th, 2022. Local and international artists and community leaders bring to life this year’s theme: Roots and Wings. The festival celebrates the thriving art of Puppet Theater as a means of enhancing perspective, generating compassion and celebrating the human spirit. With family shows, shows for adults, workshops and forum discussions, PGM: Roots and Wings has something for everyone. Over the last 25 years, the PGM festival has grown substantially. What began as an event to present unique and inspiring Puppet Theater from around the world, now welcomes thousands of participants. This year will include artists from Germany, Kenya, Jordan, Mexico, the USA, and a world premiere of a new Sandglass production. This 11th edition of PGM embraces its role as a meeting ground, an educational platform, a space for discussion, and a celebration of Puppet Theater. This year’s exceptional lineup of performances is rich with roots and wings . The festival offers meaningful engagement for any theater lover, social activist, or those looking for art that examines our roles and responsibilities in this world. Renowned companies from Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Americas offer us glimpses into their relationships with the roots of history and place, and the wings that allow us to dream and build for the future. Working closely with regional leaders, Sandglass Theater’s artists and directors present a program that goes beyond the stage and aims to foster meaningful conversation around these performances and the themes they address. Community-wide public forums, called Access Through the Arts, will underscore the powerful importance of the arts’ role in addressing and inspiring personal engagement with national and international conversations. From Kenya, Krystal Puppeteers, weave a tale filled with music, dance, and memorable characters about the dramatic roots of a river’s name and how it influences its modern day inhabitants in Tears by the River. Theater Waidspeicher from Germany returns with a poignant tale about loss of home and fleeing from war in When My Father Became a Bush. Any attendees of the 2015 festival may remember this company’s beautiful production of Romeo and Juliet. Dafa Puppet Theater (Jordan/Czech Republic) offers a story about exile and dreams in War Maker. Migraciones/Migrations (Mexico/United States) follows a photojournalist’s compelling visual journey to learn the story of refugees migrating across sand, water, and shadows performed in English and Spanish. In Judy Saves the Day, Sarah Nolen (Boston MA) offers a modern interpretation of the tradition Punch and Judy in a hilarious, timely, hand-crafted farce that the whole family will enjoy. Inspired by Japanese Butoh dance and performed to a bittersweet electroacoustic score, Body Concert by Lone Wolf Tribe is a minimalistic spectacle that partners exquisitely sculpted foam-rubber puppets in a wordless exploration of life’s beautiful impermanence. Sandglass Theater’s newest work, Flushing, is a collaboration with award winning playwright, Linda Parris-Bailey, about race, legacy, identity and the process of making room for someone else. The Brattleboro area also offers unique shops of local crafts, thrift shops, bookstores (new and used), craft breweries, and every kind of outdoor gear! Southern Vermont is also home to many crafts people: potters, woodworkers, weavers, glassblowers, and more. If you come in September, it will be apple season, and local orchards offer exceptional pies and apple cider donuts. All venues in the Puppets in the Green Mountains festival are wheelchair-accessible. Assistance can be provided for priority seating and parking. Two of the performances will be offered with ASL interpretation. Sandglass welcomes people of all abilities, and strives to provide programming that is inclusive and accessible to all.
