Sandglass Artistic Directors Receive Governor's Awards

Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts 2010 are pleased to announce that Eric Bass and Ines Zeller Bass, founders of Sandglass Theater in Putney, VT will receive Vermont's highest honor in the arts, the Governor's Award for Excellence. The world-renowned puppeteers will be celebrated in a ceremony at the Vermont State House on Thursday, February 11 at 7 PM. The free public event will include a performance by Sandglass Theater and friends.

Sandglass Theater is an internationally known company that specializes in combining puppets with music, actors and visual imagery. Their productions have toured 24 countries, performing in theaters, festivals and cultural institutions and winning numerous international prizes.

Eric Bass has worked in the theater for thirty years as a director, playwright, performer and mask and puppet maker. He was a member of Jean Erdman's Theater of the Open Eye in New York City for five years, until he left in 1980 to create his first solo performance using puppets, Autumn Portraits, which was awarded a Diploma of Excellence in Pecs, Hungary and the First Prize Critics Award for Best Production at the International Puppetry Festival in Adelaide, Australia.

In 1982, Mr. Bass founded the Sandglass Theater in Munich, Germany, with his wife, Ines Zeller Bass. Mr. Bass conceived, designed and performed in all three of the Sandglass Heaven Trilogy productions: Sand, Invitations to Heaven and The Village Child, each of which earned a Citation of Excellence from the International Union of Puppeteers. As a director, Mr. Bass has worked in America, Australia, Poland, and Finland, as well as the United States. His staging of Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle was produced at the Helsinki City Theater, Canada's Caravan Farm Theater and by Sandglass Theater for the Jim Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater in September 1996. His children's play, In My Grandmother's Purse, has been produced by theaters in the United States, Finland and Poland. In 1991, Mr. Bass was awarded the Figurentheater Prize of the City of Erlangen, Germany for his contributions to the field of puppet theater. In July 1997, Mr. Bass directed and performed in Never Been Anywhere, hailed by American Theatre as "one of the most definitively ‘American' puppet shows", filled with "characters that bite." Never Been Anywhere was performed at the Henson Festival in New York in the Fall of ‘98 where it received an UNIMA Citation of Excellence. Mr. Bass conceived and performed in Sandglass' adult production, One-Way Street, based on the life and work of Walter Benjamin.

He is currently directing and performing with comedian Bob Berky in a production of Shakespeare's Richard III entitled Richard 3.5:Light Ruminations on Murder. He directs, Between Sand and Stars, a collaboration between Sandglass Theater, Gemini Trapeze, and Rob Mermin of Circus Smirkus, which toured in Norway in 2005 and in France, Switzerland and Spain in 2006. He directed, The Story of the Dog, a collaborative piece between Sandglass Theater and Sovanna Phum Theater in Phnom Penh, Cambodia which toured Cambodian in 2005 and premiered in the US in the Fall 2006 at the Sandglass Puppet Festival, Puppets in the Green Mountains. He performed in Sandglass' latest production Bad Weather Ballads which opened at the PGM Festival in 2008. He teaches on a regular basis at the Turku Arts Academy in Finland, and currently directs an intensive puppet theater training institute with the rest of the Sandglass company for three weeks during the summer at The University of Connecticut.

Ines Zeller Bass is a puppet designer, performer, director and playwright. She has been performing with puppets since 1968, when she became a member of the Munich marionette theater, Kleines Spiel, where she worked for ten years. In 1978 she created her children's hand puppet theater, Punschi, which has toured in Europe and America. Her work with Sandglass Theater has included fullstage children's productions, The Box Show, Dwarf Longnose, and Isidor's Cheek, which earned a Citation of Excellence from UNIMA-USA in 1999. The Box Show was by the Lincoln Center Institute, as well as Arts-In-Education Institutes in Buffalo, Rochester and Utica, New York. It has toured Germany, Finland, Japan, France and Spain. Ms. Bass has also collaborated on many adult pieces including Sand, The Village Child, and Never Been Anywhere.

Mrs. Bass was also the assistant director and co-producer of Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle, performed at the Henson International Festival of Puppet Theater in New York City in September ‘96. Mrs. Bass performed in Never Been Anywhere (presented at the Henson Festival ‘98) and is performing in her new adult show entitled The Pig Act as well as One Way Street. She has recently co-created a new family piece called The Ark in the Tree, which premiered at Sandglass in April, 2004.

She designed and built puppets for Sandglass' recent production Richard 3.5: Light Ruminations on Murder. For the last three years she has been designing puppets for and performing with Sandglass on one of its most ambitious pieces, The Story of the Dog, a collaboration with Sovanna Phum Theater in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which toured Cambodia in Fall 2005 and opened in the US in the Fall of 2006 at the Sandglass Puppet Festival, Puppets in the Green Mountains before touring throughout New England.

For the last five years she has taught an intensive puppetry training program with Sandglass Company currently at The University of Connecticut, Storrs. Mrs. Bass also teaches residencies in puppetry in Vermont schools and has given professional training workshops in Japan. She is currently performing a new Sandglass Production, Ballad.

 

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