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Vermont’s famed puppets in Cambridge
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
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Say you want a revolution? Before you go raising havoc by encouraging folks to get aggressive and destructive, consider a simple tool: papier-mâché. It’s been Bread & Puppet Theater’s chosen weapon since its founding 40 years ago. At outdoor festivals of puppets, people, pageantry, and politics in its home state of Vermont, at performances of latter-day morality plays in venues as far-flung as Sarajevo, Poland, and Germany and, this month, at the Cambridge Family YMCA, Bread & Puppet has been using its giant figures to raise awareness and rally change. And the fresh-baked loafs of sourdough rye shared at performances aid digestion of the issues. "It’s about the possibility of doing art — cheap art that can be made under any circumstances, art that’s not from the academy and not from designers of our life [like mass media]," says founder and artistic director Peter Schumann. "It’s the art you make in response to circumstances and politics. Take a parade against war. That’s a piece of art that makes sense. When we started protesting Vietnam in the ’60s, it was hard to get people to listen. People threw rotten tomatoes at us in the street. It took years to get people to recognize what was happening, before parades in New York were massive. The newspapers were going along with the government, and so was television. Naturally, we needed outdoor demonstrations done spontaneously and in an organized manner. Now with this war in Iraq, it only took a few days and people were out all over little towns protesting. A bigger response indicates a bigger effect. The government is lying like crazy. Powell stood up in front of the UN with artistic pictures of what happened in Iraq. We are on the other side. . . . The CIA is making one drawing, we’re making another." The venerable troupe’s staying power can be attributed to a blend of shoestring resources, cultural accessibility, anarchic artistry, and an ability to perpetually breathe life into an ancient tradition. According to Dr. John Bell, an Emerson College professor, puppet historian, and long-time puppeteer with the company, stock dramatic characters have long been the voices of political dissent. Kings have customarily endured the criticism of Punch of the pugilistic Punch-and-Judy duo, Arlecchino of Commedia dell’arte, and Petrushka of Russian hand-puppet tradition. Bell traveled the world with Bread & Puppet between 1973 and 1986, but the connection between theater and politics became most apparent to him in Poland. "The Communist government controlled all the media," he recalls. "Live theater is where you went to have a chance to talk about issues by presenting images, singing, and communicating by means other than dialogue. Today, political art is not simply about drama. Effective political art is all around us." To address that omnipresence, Bell invited political artists involved with a variety of media for a symposium on Monday, November 17, entitled "Subversive Papier-Mâché and Other Tools for Creative Dissent." Between rounds of performances of Oratorio of the Possibilitarians, which is based on texts by Thomas Friedman and Joel Kovel, and the family-friendly Victory Over Everything Circus, Schumann, along with playwright and radical historian Howard Zinn, filmmaker and Providence feminist art-collective member Xander Marro, and Robbie McCauley, an Emerson professor and director who often works with prison populations, will discuss the paint-and-paste path to dissidence. When asked about an opposing voice for the panel, moderator Bell grabbed a newspaper and retorted, "They get to have their view expressed every day." Bread & Puppet Theater performs at Durrell Hall in the Cambridge Family YMCA, 820 Massachusetts Avenue in Central Square through November 23. Tickets are $5 to $10. The symposium on "Subversive Papier-Mâché" is Monday, November 17, at 7 p.m. Suggested donation is $5; call (617) 661-9622.
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