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Sandglass Theatre
USA
All Weather Ballads is a visual theater piece incorporating original ballads by Eric Bass with music by Keith Murphy. The five-song cycle portrays the stages of life through metaphors of the northern rural experience, when we are stuck in the mud, lost in the aroma of harvest fruit, or reflected in the frozen membrane of an icy lake. It is about a sense of place and those moments when we look both forward and backward in time. All Weather Ballads is a performance of dry humor, ironic poignancy, and elemental cursing.
All Weather Ballads takes the audience through 5 scenes, each a metaphorical world, a state of being. The first is the Ballad of the Ice Shanty, in which fishermen pull their fishing shacks out onto the frozen lake with roaring snowmobiles. The interior of each ice shanty contains a story in itself – a story of love, or jealousy, or the passing of time. In the end, the ice melts, and not everything survives. Some lives pass through the “frozen membrane between states of consciousness.”
The second scene is the Ballad of the Muddy Road. A young and over-confident truck-driver gets his pickup stuck on a mountain road. With great effort, he tries to dislodge the vehicle from the sucking, unpaved shortcut. His frustrated efforts lead from caution to desperation to rage as he watches his beer carried off and is left with only the “dirty truth” of his situation.
The third scene is the Ballad of the Apple Ladder. A woman working in an apple orchard imagines the choices of apples to be like the choices one makes in life. Which is the perfect apple? Which is the perfect love? Which is the perfect path to a happy life? Like apples in a tree, they all look the same. How can one tell which is the sweetest?
The fourth scene is the Ballad of the Rooftops. The highest point of each house, barn, or church is the rooftop. As fire rages, the flames consume even this highest point. Beneath each rooftop, rooms are the last repository of memories and secrets. When the fire reaches even these rooms, turning the contents to ash, what happens to those memories and secrets? How does a community respond?
The final scene is the Ballad of the Woodpile. A husband and wife, well on in years, cut a log with a 2-person saw. They cut and cut, but the work has no end. They cut through the seasons, through the years. Still, the log will not saw through. To what point does this bring them? How do they assess their lives?
Sandglass moved to Putney, Vermont in 1986. The company continued to operate solely as a touring company until 1995, when the Basses bought the former S.L. Davis barn, a former livery stable in the heart of Putney Village. The 60-seat barn theater now hosts the Sandglass repertoire of pieces for adult audiences, pieces for children, a Guest Artists series, and special events and workshops related to the varied arts of theater and puppetry.
Sandglass productions have toured worldwide to theaters and festivals in Europe, America, Israel, Australia and Japan. Eric Bass' solo production Autumn Portraits (1980) was awarded the Citation of Excellence from the Union Internationale de la Marionnette, the Diploma of Excellence from Pecs, Hungary, and the First Prize Critics Award for Best Production at the International Puppetry Festival in Adelaide, Australia. Other Sandglass productions have earned the company five more Citations of Excellence. Sandglass productions have appeared at the Brooklyn Academy of Music's Next Wave Festival, and the Jim Henson Festival at the Joseph Papp Public Theater. In 1991, Eric Bass received the Figurentheater Prize of the City of Erlangen, Germany, for his artistic contributions to the field of puppet theater.
Sandglass Theater also produces works for young audiences, under the Artistic Direction of Ines Zeller Bass. The Box Show toured in France, Spain, Finland, Israel and Japan. Other pieces for children have included Ines' hand puppet theater, Punschi, as well as Isidor’s Cheek, which won Sandglass a Citation of Excellence for a Children's work in 1999.
Sandglass has created over 20 productions. Among the company’s collaborations have been The Story of the Dog (with Sovanna Phum company from Cambodia), Between Sand and Stars (with Gemini Trapeze) and Richard 3.5 (with Bob Berky).
Sandglass produces a bi-annual festival of international puppet theater, Puppets in the Green Mountains. The 7th edition of the festival will take place in September 2010. The company teaches an intensive training workshop for three weeks in July at the University of Connecticut.
Concept and Ballad texts by Eric Bass
Originally Directed by Rich van Schouwen, Restaged by
Eric Bass and the company
Performed by Eric Bass, Ines Zeller Bass, Nick Keil
Music Composed by Keith Murphy
Puppets Designed and Built by Ines Zeller Bass, Matt Brooks
www.sandglasstheater.org
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