Sandglass Theater’s puppets, actors, a musician, shadows created from light projections, a creative stage set, and more will welcome us into their collaborative process on Saturday, June 24, at the Yard. After speaking with Shoshana Bass, co-artistic director of the theater company, I’m extremely eager to see “Feral,” the project that they will be working on during their residency here.
In the piece, the ensemble members don’t appear hidden, but interact with one another and the puppets, and some will wear masks, making them somewhere between fully human and puppets. “We don’t hide as puppeteers,” Bass says. “We play in the relationship between the actor and the puppet, and how the worlds meet in that way. In performing, part of me is in me and part of me is in the puppet.”
Sandglass works collaboratively with different ensemble members to create each project. The group for “Feral” includes performers Stoph Scheer, who brings the perspective of a trans woman; Dey Hernandez, who is based in Puerto Rico and is a puppeteer, dancer, and architect; and Bass herself. They will be joined by vocal percussionist Molly Es, who is working with a loop pedal, an electronic device that records audio and plays it back in a loop, as well as Sarah Nolen, director/outside eye, and technical collaborator Maria Pugnetti.
But it isn’t just the ensemble members who exchange ideas. Part and parcel of Sandglass’s process is the dialogue with the audience after the performance. This exchange will help shape “Feral” moving forward. “The performance will be part of its creation process, rather than a final production,” Bass explains. “It’s so important for us to really hear what is seen, what people remember, and what associations come up for them. That’s a vital part of the way we develop any piece.”
Bass shares that “Feral” explores the relationship between learned behavior and intuitive knowledge, specifically how that plays out for female-gender bodies. It has a folktale quality to it. The premise is that a she-wolf was bitten by a werewolf, who turns into a woman and has to navigate society and life in a female form — but with this wildness inside that she has to understand and find the wisdom of.
“The impetus for the show is to really question how and who defines knowledge in our world today,” Bass says. “In some way, that’s a feminist perspective, but I think that’s true of any gender. We are talking about the liberation of everyone who is bound up in how we trust our embodied or ancestral knowledge. I was so inspired by the female leaders of the Me Too and Black Lives Matter movements — all these ways in, which I feel like they are related in this conversation of who is defining knowledge and how we all can play a part in that.”
Sandglass began the creation process by interviewing 10 female-identified people all over the world, asking questions about how we know what we know, and what happens when inner, intuitive knowledge comes into tension with outside forces in our lives. From there, they started drawing out imagery and their own stories. The work at the Yard will be to hone their focus, as well as to find the physical language of the show. Bass says their ability to play with the movement aspect is what “makes the collaboration with the Yard really exciting, because there is so much dance imbued in that space; we’re excited to feed off of that magic.”
Bass says she is fascinated with the definition of feral in relation to women — to the idea of something that was once wild being domesticated, and then put back into the wild without its intuitive knowing: “We are out there in this free, wild situation, but don’t have all the tools needed to stay safe.”
Bass shares one of her favorite quotes, which is by bell hooks, an American author, theorist, educator, and social critic best known for her writings on race, feminism, and class — and its connection to Sandglass’s art form: “Dare I speak to you in a language that will move beyond the boundaries of domination — a language that will not bind you, fence you in, or hold you?” “I think for me that’s what puppetry does, and why it’s such an evocative tool for working with any social issues, because we are working in a different language, which is playful, intuitive, and somewhat separate, because it’s a puppet and it’s open for anyone to be in relationship with,” Bass says. “As an object, we can fill it with all our own associations and projections.”
Speaking about the performance, Bass says, “I hope that there’s curiosity afterward. Having the experience of being together and talking about this I find is really vital to our mutual growth. As is also the idea that we’re not alone in these investigations and these struggles, and that there’s a way of sharing creative space, which can allow us to integrate these things that we separate within ourselves.”
Tickets for “Feral” by Sandglass Theater on June 24 at 7 pm are available at dancetheyard.org/sandglass-theater.
