Recorded on: March 7th, 2023
Run Time: 1 hour, via Zoom
Cost: $18 suggested donation

Two premier female puppeteers meet to talk about the challenges and joys of art as life. Join us as Mexican-born Sofia Padilla and German-born Ines Zeller Bass meet in conversation.

Artist Bios

Ines Zeller Bass, Puppet and Stage Design
Ines Zeller Bass, Co-Founding Artistic Director of Sandglass, has been performing with puppets since 1968, when she became a member of the Munich marionette theater, Kleines Spiel. In 1978, she created her children’s hand puppet theater, PUNSCHI, which has toured Europe, Australia and the US. In 1982, Ines co-founded Sandglass Theater with husband Eric in Germany and moved the theater to Vermont in the mid-1980s. Ines started Sandglass Theater’s program for family audiences. Together with Eric, she teaches their approach to puppetry performance and devised composition in workshops in Vermont and abroad. She designed the puppets and set for Natan El Sabio, a collaborative project with Teatro Luis Poma in El Salvador. Ines’ puppets and design for Babylon, Sandglass Theater’s production, include two of her many crankies. Ines has last been touring with Sandglass’ production of D-Generation, An Exaltation of Larks, a piece about people with dementia. She is an UNIMA citation winner and in 2010, received the Vermont Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts. Ines has retired from touring but is still very connected to Sandglass through her designs and puppet building, including puppets for Eric’s new collaboration with playwright and performer Linda Paris Bailey. Ines has also built the Little Merrill puppet for Tune Yard’s new music video.

Sofía Padilla
Director, Actress, Puppeteer, Puppetry Designer and Builder
Sofía Padilla is a theater artist from Mexico City who works internationally as a puppeteer and director. She graduated from the acting conservatory Centro Universitario de Teatro UNAM, Mexico City, in 2007. Her career as an independent puppeteer has included writing, directing, and performing numerous productions of her own. As an ensemble performer, Sofía has puppeteered in hundreds of performances with the Cuban company Teatro 2 de Cuba (2007-2013), with Berta Hiriart’s company Los Cantores del Confín at FETEN festival in Spain and several festivals in Mexico (2010-2018), and in a touring stage adaptation of the hit Latin American puppetry TV show “31 Minutos” (2011-2012). On Television, Sofía worked as the First Assistant Director of the 2016 season of Sesame Street in Mexico City: “Listos a Jugar.” Sofía is a co-director of Paradox Teatro, which she founded in 2017 with Davey T Steinman. Paradox Teatro created their inaugural production, Migraciones / Migrations, which they toured around the world. Paradox Teatro has received three grants from “The Jim Henson Foundation” to develop two different projects: Migraciones / Migrations (2019 production grant) and Speechless / Sin palabras (2021 workshop grant and 2022 production grant). She currently works with Bread and Puppet Theater in the USA, which she joined in 2017 as a puppeteer, and has performed on seven tours across North America and several summer show seasons at their farm in Glover, Vermont.