Artist bios

Shoshana Bass is co-artistic director of Sandglass Theater based in Putney, Vermont on the unceded lands of the Abenaki people. Having been raised in a traveling family of internationally acclaimed puppeteers, she has spent her life witnessing and in dialogue with artistic voices of diverse cultures, heritages, and perspectives. Now she performs, directs, and choreographs internationally. She was the festival director for Sandglass’ 2018 Puppets in the Green Mountains International Festival. Shoshana also produces the family-friendly “Winter Sunshine” series, as well as the social activist “Voices of Community” series. She is a touring ensemble member with the company in Babylon, Journeys of Refugees; Rock the Boat; and Punschi and her solo performance When I Put On Your Glove. She will be the lead artist for this new production. As a rural-based artist touring frequently to cities, she is especially interested in how our experiences, identities and inherited histories live in our bodies, and she works with puppets because they are a provocative means of inviting story and containing metaphorical worlds.

GennaRose Nethercott is the author of a novel, Thistlefoot, and a book-length poem, The Lumberjack’s Dove, which was selected by Louise Glück as a winner of the National Poetry Series. Her forthcoming short story collection, Fifty Beasts to Break Your Heart, arrives in February. She tours nationally and internationally performing strange tales (sometimes with puppets in tow) and helps create the podcasts Lore and Harlots--the latter of which she also hosts. She lives in the woodlands of Vermont, beside an old cemetery.

Maria Pugnetti is a multimedia artist and technical designer who has worked on numerous shows, collaborating with various arts organizations and theatre companies in the Southern Vermont area. Her skill set includes video and projection design, scenic painting, costume design, and sound and lighting design.

Dr. Paulina Trejo Mendez is a Mexican feminist, researcher and artist currently living in Europe where she did her PhD on the field of development studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests are forms of resistance to the violence of epistemicide (erasure of ways of knowing) and to femicide (erasure of racialized- gendered-feminized bodies). Her dissertation considers these while looking at the politics of knowledge within the field of development studies from a decolonial lens. Her artistic work is political, touches upon the colonial wound, medical violence, othering gaze, spirituality, embodied/enfleshed resistance and healing. She is cofounder of Comalli Collective focused on creative projects on art and healing. Paulina’s participation in the research for this project will open doors as well as provide foundational context. She will be our social dramaturg for this project and help with facilitating engagement beyond the performance.

dey hernández is an Afro-Caribbean bicultural worker (AgitArtecollective), curator, interdisciplinary artist, permaculturist, puppeteer (Papel Machete), movement artist (Danza Orgánica), designer and educator centering on collaborative projects + practices. As a border artist between Puerto Rico and Boston, through modeling, manifesting and building opportunities for liberation in the everyday, our work untangles how the complicated diasporic and colonial histories of this so-called nation persist and continue to operate throughout the world and within its own perimeters. dey holds a Master of Architecture (March) from the University of Puerto Rico. We work at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality and ideology. Ella is based in Roxbury, MA.

Molly Es is a multi-faceted artist from Brattleboro, Vermont. As both a vocalist and drummer, her styles are wide-ranging from soul to jazz, to hip-hop, funk, reggae and R&B. As an actor and clown, Es's work by nature is largely comedic. She is an avid learner and teacher of beat boxing and vocal improvisation. This study has led her to explore improv as a solo artist by utilizing a looping pedal. Es has taught drums, voice, beat boxing, percussion and body percussion both locally and internationally, and is currently working on a solo album.

Stoph Scheer (performing ensemble) a puppeteer, writer, improviser, deviser, puppet-maker, and director with a background in both theater and circus arts. Her original works have enjoyed productions all around the United States, and these projects focus variously on climate change, creativity, screen time, social justice, gender diversity, slapstick, and the absurd.

Sarah Nolen (Director) is a puppeteer and filmmaker originally from Austin, Texas. As Puppet Showplace Theater’s resident artist, she performs regularly for youth and family audiences around New England and teaches puppetry classes to all ages. Her three original productions, Lisa the Wise, Judy Saves the Day, and The Fairy Tailor have all toured extensively in the Northeast and beyond. In addition to her own shows, Sarah has done puppet builds for Netflix, Suffolk University, Boston College, and more. Sarah earned her BFA in film from Southern Methodist University, and an MFA in Puppet Arts from the University of Connecticut.

Thank you to our funders

This project is funded in part by grants from the Jim Henson Foundation, the Community Foundation Santa Cruz County, the Network of Ensemble Theaters NET/TEN Virtual Exploration grant and by the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how National Endowment for the Arts grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov. Feral is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project grant with co-commissioners The Yard (MA), Next Stage Arts Project (VT), Bunnell Street Arts Center (AK), Dancers Workshop (Wyoming) and NPN. More information: www.npnweb.org.