BRATTLEBORO-Sandglass Theater's community event, "Puppets in Paradise" (PIP), returns Friday through Sunday, Oct. 10–12, featuring varied artists and a spectacle to open the weekend.
All the performances will be held at Retreat Farm on Route 30. Audiences can walk around the farm and encounter short-form puppet performances, theater artists, and musicians amidst the fields, historic barns, and animals. Food and refreshments from local vendors will be available.
Puppets in Paradise runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday (last performance begins at 3:30 p.m.). Golf carts will be available for increased accessibility for most performance locations. Sandglass estimates that the full daytime experience takes at least two hours.
The opening evening (Oct. 10, 6:15 p.m. onwards) will feature a parade of giant lantern puppets followed by an outdoor shadow puppetry performance from Kerala, India, called tholpavakoothu. This traditional form of puppetry features 60 deerskin puppets placed in front of coconut oil lamps that cast shadows behind screens as the puppeteers enact the story with myriad characters. Puppets in Paradise 2025 will be the first festival in Vermont to feature a tholpavakoothu performance.
Oct. 11 and 12 will feature continuous short performances from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets and more info can be found at sandglasstheater.org.
More information on performing artists:
• Heather Henson (Green Feather Foundation), daughter of Jim and Jane Henson, will be bringing her show, Remember the Way: Fish and Flow Experience in which audiences will be encouraged to connect with their local body of water. Through kinetic learning, embodied movement, crafting with natural materials, and place-based meditations, participants of all ages will find new connections with their place within the great flow of the world's water and the beings that live within them.
Green Feather Foundation is a multi-platform nonprofit supporting the artistic, educational, and philanthropic work of Ibex Puppetry, Puppet Slam Network, Handmade Puppet Dreams, and more. With roots dating back to 2000, the foundation "promotes the health of the planet through puppetry, artistic spectacle, and immersive educational programming."
• Sarah Nolen (Puppet Motion) will bring her storytelling show called Party Animals, featuring an array of furry friends that have their own names and eclectic character traits. Nolen holds a master of fine arts and is known nationally for her innovative work across multiple puppetry styles. In 2015, she received the Mister Rogers Memorial Scholarship in support of her television pilot Treeples, a show geared toward empowering girls, which screened at film festivals across the U.S.
• Tom Tuke, a puppeteer from Aotearoa/New Zealand, now based in Connecticut, will perform Tales of Kimi: The New Death, along with Melissa Carter, a puppeteer from Seattle. Their show is a tale of the Grim Reaper, the laziest deity in all the land, and his hapless assistant, Kimi. As they navigate the river Styx, they get hungry, and decide to find a feed.
• Charlotte Lily Gaspard (Midnight Radio Show) brings Mermaid Life Story, a hand-painted mermaid puppet's journey accompanied by original songs. Midnight Radio Show is a shadow puppet and science fiction fairytale theatre collective based out of Brooklyn, New York.
• Stoph Scheer (Doppelskope) will present Sharing Update, a comedic monologue about a father with limited vocabulary who tries to update his friends about his child's gender transition, admonishing them to respect his child's identity while accidentally misgendering his kid at the same time. Scheer is a puppeteer, writer, and improvisor known for her work with Sandglass, The Creatures of Yes, The Jim Henson Company, Disney, Banksy, and Les Sages Fous in addition to her own company, Doppelskope.
• Andrew Kim (Thingumajig Theatre) is a puppet maker and performer based in West Yorkshire, England, with over 30 years of experience creating parades, giant puppets, and performances worldwide. He started at In the Heart of the Beast (Minneapolis) and Bread and Puppet, and studied traditional Korean and Balinese forms. Founder of the Hebden Bridge Handmade Parade and the Todmorden Lamplighter Festival, he also teaches large-scale puppet building and performance internationally, including at Sandglass Theater.
• Kimberly Cotter-Lemus, a puppetry artist, musician, and arts educator based in Rhode Island, brings to life Madame Manouche - a world-renowned fortuneteller or an unscrupulous charlatan - she lets the audience decide.
• Kirk Murphy and Shoshana Bass (Sandglass Theater) will present the gargoyle duo Hugo and Claude. Alike in stone only, one delights in the daily visits from pigeon friends and dreams of flying freely with them, while the other gargoyle can't stand them and can only grumble about those pesky little birds. One day, a miracle happens.
• Ines Zeller Bass and Eric Bass, with Matt Sharff, will perform their original crankie, "The Cabbage Leaf Summit." A crankie is a scrolling panorama, housed in a wooden box and often turned (or "cranked") to the music of a ballad. This crankie brings to visual life a song by Eric Bass as a Mole, a Vole, and a Nasty Old Troll meet under a Cabbage Leaf to discuss their dreams for a better world. Ultimately, they can only affirm their appetites.
Sandglass offers four ticketing options to choose from ranging between $10 and $25. These equity tickets are a way for audiences to determine their ability to support the community. Children two years and under receive free admission.
This Arts item was submitted to The Commons.