Sept 18, 2009
Johnson, Vermont

Lily, Whitney, Jacqueline and I ventured into the NorthEast Kingdom today to pay homage and a visit to our magical darling Peter Schumann, a man who looks like he walked out of a fairytale. Peter Schumann is the founder and director of the Bread and Puppet Theater. The Bread and Puppet Theater is a politically radical puppet theater (with puppets made out of paper mache) active since the 1960’s. Peter and a few troop members came to the Studio Center last week and graced us with a performance.

Ever since I first laid eyes on Peter Schumann at lunch last Saturday, I have been enamored and fascinated by him. During last Saturday’s performance, Peter performed a “sermon” about the paper mache religion and I maybe heard 5 sentences out of the entire sermon. I could not take my eyes off of Peter, words lost meaning and only his presence mattered.

The Bread and Puppet Museum is a 3 story barn that houses all the paper mache puppets from shows that has been retired. What is inside the barn is INCREDIBLE! Peter came out and chatted with us for a little while and showed us the Paper Mache Theater with the Dirt Floor Cathedral. A barn that has been turned into a theater space with all the walls and ceiling covered in paper mache figures and drawings. Birds and chipmunks reside in the paper mache theater along with all the magic that Peter conjures.

The experience of this visit left all of us speechless. Please excuse the lack of grace this blog entry has as I have been struggling for hours trying to describe what we witnessed today in that 3 story barn. Words are insufficient, or maybe I simply lack the grace and skill to wrangle that magical magnificence we experience in that 2 hours into paragraphs that makes sense. What can be put into words is that there is a 3 story barn and it is filled with paper mache puppets. The puppets were used for political protest and performance and some of the puppets are 10 feet tall. What those sentences do not convey is the beauty and depth that has been expressed in these puppets, in the art that Peter and The Bread and Puppet Theater created.

Before we went out to the NorthEast Kingdom today, Whitney has asked me to justify why I am so fascinated and set on (even before I meet Peter) going to the Bread and Puppet theater. Whitney had though that the puppets were made of bread (which would have been awesome) and after discovering that the puppets are not made of bread, she demanded that I back up my interest. I am fascinated because I love puppetry. I am fascinate because paper mache is such a simple material, played with mostly by children, not “serious” art material used by “serious” artists. To have an entire museum filled with nothing but paper mache puppets, what is not interesting about that?

So much anguish and injustice are expressed in the puppets. So much beauty, longing and desire for equality and a better world is told through the puppets. The form so simple. The materials basic and cheap. Yet the artistry that the puppets are made with, the expression…In that barn, I was offered beauty that broke my heart. I am humbled. All of us were brought to our knees. All of this desire for something more, equality, justice, even perhaps revolution, in contrast with Peter. Oh, Peter, a man who is filled with joy and magic. He is beautiful. You look at him and you do not experience the anger and outrage he must feel towards US government, US foreign policy, or the injustice and inequality that he protests against in this world. All you feel is wonderment and magic. This contradiction, this beauty, this dedication to something that he profoundly believes in and has dedicated his life to …

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This is the Bread and Puppet philosophy:

We give you a piece of bread with the puppet show because our bread and theater belong together. For a long time the theater arts have been separated from the stomach. Theater was entertainment. Entertainment was meant for the skin. Bread was meant for the stomach. The old rite of baking, eating and offering bread were forgotten. The bread decay and became mush. We would like you to take your shoes off when you come to our puppet show or we would like to bless you with the fiddle bow. The bread shall remind you of the sacrament of eating.

We want you to understand that theater is not yet an established form, not the place of commerce you think it is, where you pay to get something. Theater is different. It is more like bread, more like a necessity. Theater is a form of religion. It preaches sermons and builds a self-sufficient ritual. Puppet theater is the theater of all means. Puppet and masks should be played in the street. They are louder than the traffic. They don’t teach problems, but they scream and dance and display life in its clearest terms. Puppet theater is of action rather than of dialogue. The action is reduced to the simplest dance like complicated body of many heads, hand, rods and fabric.

We have two types of puppet shows: good ones and bad ones, but all of them are for good and against evil.

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Peter is about to take leave of us so we may wonder through the museum at our leisure. He says good bye to Lily, Whitney and Jacqueline. I am on my knees rummaging through my backpack for another battery for my camera, I stuck my hand out to shake his, Peter take my hand and give me a kiss on the cheek. I am flattered. I was the only one he kissed. As I think back on that moment I realize it was out of a fairytale. I was on one knee, paying respect to a magical man, and this man with a magical tappy soul who I have been in love with since last week, graced me with a kiss and maybe (I hope) left me with bit of magic.

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