The Bread and Puppet Theatre.
Our group makes the use of the big as well as small puppets to reflect the density in our theme but moreover makes the use of the masks to show the various moods as was being shown by conventional artists. Added to it, we also have the music to play behind the actions where the deep irony is at play. The masks we use are of different shapes, color and gestures revealing the intense emotions.
The Bread and Puppet Theater group is a puppet troupe whose main themes revolve around political issues. The group is currently situated on a farm in Vermont, making it possible for them to create the plays on the farm and attain apprentice for the shows. Many plays being performed by the groups also have environment themes. The theater was originally founded by Peter Schumann in 1961, inspired by the peace movement at New York. He wrote many anti-war plays for his group and also included religion and morality as the themes in his plays.
The theater got its name from the practice of distributing the free bread group adopted during its various performances. The main themes of their plays are the contemporary social and political issues with the motive of spreading the information, raising the social consciousness among the people and establishing strong community. The distribution of the bread was the main characteristic feature of the theater focusing on the concept of the fact that bread is a necessity. The unique feature of the theater is its use of the huge puppets and effigies instead of people as characters for performances. They sometimes are being controlled by the experts standing on the stilts and measures as tall as 20 feet. The puppets were also regularly used during the demonstrations and peace marches against the Vietnam War and during each particular war or occupation of the military by the United States government during that period. The puppeteers were also quite popularly used during the global justice movement and were also the active participant in the protests undertaken by the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle in 1999. Around 70 of the puppeteers also got themselves arrested at a warehouse during the 2000 Republican National Convention (RNC) in Philadelphia, where they were temporarily staying. (Ness, Online) As said such, theatres explored the same themes as the experimental theatres, but their expressed aim was to incite social changethey reacted against the trends of society. Some sought to create a sense of unity within the audience to combat the dehumanization of life, while others deliberately provoked the audience to overcome public apathy and create active response. (Watson McKernie 453)
The Bread and Puppet Theater started from very a small, confined around streets and during outdoors shows taking active part in parades along with performing in indoor settings. A show called Fire in 1966 creation sensation in which masked performers performed on a slow, dreamlike and prayerful choreography in the honour of three Americans who in order to protest against the Vietnam War had immolated themselves. On seeing this, in 1968, the group was invited by Christian Dupavillon during the World Theatre Festival in Nancy, France. Their show was so successful in Europe that they received accolades from all corners resulting in their performances all over Europe. (Kennedy, Online) During 1970, Schumann, and his wife and partner Elka and his family left for Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, which became the center of 1960s counterculture, a community of artisans, musicians, activists, performers, entrepreneurs, and communes who fed each other the vision of an alternative way of life at some distance from the economics and mass culture of American capitalism. (Bell, 53) It was in this place was born the Domestic Resurrection Circus which became an annual event that would eventually become one of the most extraordinary cultural happenings of our time. (Kennedy, Online) In 1974, Bread and Puppet Theater shifted to their current home, a farm at Glover, Vermont and it still stands there as a witness to its glorious past. Amidst the rolling hills and flat grassland, it also has a museum of puppets ranging from as small as finger tip to eight feet tall. (Kennedy, Online)
The theater also criticizes all those institutes who enslave peasants in the name of development be it banks, government, McDonalds or other institutes. (Mitchell, 136) The Domestic Resurrection Circus and Pageant had become a type of annual pilgrimage for many people. To see their play and Circus, around 30,000 to 40, 000 people would travel to Glover, Vermont every year even though exact dates were never known to them in advance as it would become almost impossible to manage the crowds. (Kennedy, Online) Because of such large gatherings, problems erupted and need aroused to adopt the preventive measures. A logistics committee in a close proximity with the community was formed to work on the annual affairs with the event. (Bell, 58)
The Domestic Resurrection Circus was an effort to sort out new way for performances which could give more humane touch and not merely show of something exceptional or extraordinary but also feat to really come closer to the people making it very appealing and close to the nature. The group wanted to show their performance eventually in the place where they could be able to integrate themselves and come in close proximity to nature and in real time rivers, mountains and animals. The circus skillfully adopted the energies of the Plainfield performing community. The initial events were the depiction of the history of America ending with the war of Vietnam. Just like Bread and Puppet Theater group, it was also regularly seeking to raise the contemporary issues by making use of the puppets and masks as symbols including making use of the jokes giving comic relief. (Bell, 53)
In 1974, the Bread and Puppet residency at the Goddard College came to an end and the theater shifted towards North to an ex dairy farm in Glover, around 20 miles south towards the Canadian border known as Northeast Kingdom. From the months of 1975 through 1998, they grew in the region with performers as well as spectators. The economy of the Northeast Kingdom during 1970s was developed with people quite rich, and the occasional events were the part of the life. The group made a great leap with the themes of political ideologies, and forms which were most appealing to the viewers along with this most important of all creating a capitalist culture. By 1998, the cultural economy of Vermont saw the sea change when the economy got developed by the arrival of Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield who converted their ice cream parlor running since 1978 at their old gas station in Burlington into a corporation of social awareness. So were the Bernie Sanders, who once was the third-party candidate for state office, was now considered as the only socialist in the U.S. Congress. The Barton Chronicle had also been started as the paper for Orleans County, and regarded as the symbol of good journalism. And also the Bread and Puppet Circus volunteers had also become the esteemed members of their own communities. The Circus being organized during the summer season became the most crucial as well as central event. As the popularity of the group grew, new music, themes, and movements were created making it more appealing to the audience. (Bell, 55-57)
The theater of Schumann is also considered as objectively religious with the human gesture displaying objective values inherited in the landscape where the man is considered as awkward. He gives the treatment to the theater like a magic camera by which this visitor harmoniously fumbling with old lenses, attempts to catch himself in the landscape cavorting in a desert or stomping about in a fragile garden (Sacral Theatre, 77) The idea is that gesture it portrays reveals the true picture of the human beings as if the modern cameras are taking pictures of beyond what is visible. The characters too in the Schumann plays are neither the real people nor fictitiously created characters, but they are all fantasy creatures with emotions and a symbol of the existence itself or a way of living. The identification of the actions is done by crafting in the characters.
Another most important trait of these characters is the masks worn by puppeteers. These masks carry the emotions in the stories and the sadness associated with the death as well as the masks show beauty agitating against the norms of the day but with style. They also wear the masks of the foppish, feeble minded, and of the supernatural creatures, monstrous and strange. They are the symbols of death and destruction but hidden with these masks is the intensity of their zeal, emotions, plea, and desire for the change and spreading the messages. (Brecht, 48)
The main essence of Schumann as he himself suggests, The norm should be plastic, undefined, broken space, not enclosed by sets but fragmentally defined by mobile decor, so that action is not between or within but around. (Brecht, 46) His characters show strong emotions and gestures, which are not normal in every day lives but also not wishy-washed by characters. (Brecht, 46)
Since last more than forty years, Bread and Puppet has made its presence felt and thousands of puppeteers have shown their artistic endeavors with Peter Schumann, but the theater has always survived financial constraints, receiving no subsidy and often giving performances absolutely free of cost. Like minded people are even willing to work for the theater for a meager sum to show their commitment towards the theater and their political as well as artistic deeds. Many of these puppeteers have also opened their own companies, but sharing the same vision and thoughts.
The theater also has become the initiation point for the beginning of the political puppetry. During their participation against the World Bank, the World Trade Organization as well as the Republican National Convention, many of the puppeteers was arrested, they were molested by the police and their puppets confiscated and destroyed. The uniqueness of the Bread and the Puppet Theater lies in its approach and the way they create closeness with their audience and also artistic mind of Schumann.
Though puppetry during the age of television is often described as the art for children filled with monsters, howdy dowdy or the likes yet Peter Schumann made this art form voice of the people in the most artistically fashioned style. The pictures and scriptures in these plays are the garlands of puppetry and ordained by the ambition to deliver the world fragmented and uncontrolled picture of itself. It is this picture which can praise as well as directly hit at the same time which our group following the conventional Bread and Puppetry style also wishes to draw against racism, firearms and other issues prevalent in British National Party.
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