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There’s puppet thea-tah, and there’s puppet theatre. Puppet thea-tah (which is a lot of fun in its own right) is peppered with spooky shadow play, life size puppets, Jungian motifs, and tantalizing visual imagery. “All Weather Ballads” by Sandglass Theatre at the Theatre Project, fits more neatly in the second group. It’s closer to being an exercise in inventive story telling, starring a bunch of cute, jerky puppets, with less emphasis on creating those floating networks of je-ne-sais-quoi.
The three artists behind “All Weather Ballads” may look like a trio of folk singers on a reunion tour, but make no mistake, they’re internationally known puppetry pros who have been working together since 1982. Eric Bass, Ines Bass, and Nick Kell aren’t invisible (as some puppeteers prefer to be); in a low-key way, they inject their personalities into the productions. And, riffing on the vagueries of weather and its emotional resonances, they manage to construct a quintet of inventive and thought-provoking stories.
This short (one hour) production moves slowly but surely into gear. The opening skit, “Ballad of the Ice Shanty” involves a little conflict and internecine warfare among ice fishermen. The ice itself seems to be the dominating character, its illusory shield from reality. “The Ballad of the Muddy Road,” involves a stringy young man whose four wheel drive has gotten stuck in the muck. From the texture of mud, we move on to “The Ballad of the Apple Ladder“, where we explored the texture a magical apple, dangling from the tree turns into a naked woman.
But as the seasons pile on, with attendant variations in weather, with their various problems, the actors and the weather patterns, along with the wood, the pigs, the apples, and the mud all seem to worm their way into a story which gains in texture and style as the story progresses. In a country where billions of dollars get poured annually in pursuit “controlling the narrative”, it’s a lot of fun, and inspiring, to watching this tight group of Vermonters work with what they’ve got.
And it’s easy to watch: the extended, folk-ballad musings of Eric Bass as performed by guitarist/singer Nick Kell have a pleasantly hypnotic effect, while offering a narrative account to grab on to. It’s magical, thought provoking, and, unless you have a problem with apples turning into naked women, you can bring the kids.
So it’s well worth seeing, and it’s going to be here for one more weekend. But there’s one thing I can’t help saying. And then I’ll shut up.
Maybe it’s that I’m a writer, but I don’t get it when the program notes say, and I quote, that the essential meaning of visual theatre transpires through the visual vernacular. Does this already-splintered world of provincial theatre need to define itself by saying we’ll understand better if we just plug our ears? I’m sorry. The QuestFest is definitely worth seeing — it’s one of the best things to come to Baltimore in a long time. But calling it “visual theatre” can obscure the essential point: that groups like Sandglass Theatre are, plain and simple, revitalizing the art of storytelling. In a world where stories are used as coat hangers for 200 million dollar action movies, we need them badly. And leave out the part about written language being artificial. Especially when it’s written in the program notes.
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