Bread and Puppet Still Radical

I start with a short clip of the wonderful musicians, especially the trumpet player who was music director. The musicians played parts in the skits and changed instruments ( the tuba player switched to a  tiny flute for example and he was Bishop Romero)  . You click on it and it downloads so you can view it.

musicians before

Here is  a short clip of the opening

opening movie

 

Bread and Puppet amazing performance. They were last here in 2007 with Mother Courage honoring Rachel Corrie. Now they have the Apocalypse Defiance Circus that includes COVID epidemic, Palestine, exploitation by Big Dairy, Bolsonaro’s havoc in Brazil, history of reparations, and much more with insanely huge puppets great music and staggering energy.

Here are a few images

Women on stilts riding zebras! This is the crazy fun. The women on stilts started by reading the New York Times and throwing it down in disgust, then the zebras came in and  picked them up. Our connection to nature and animals, that we need them to save us, might be a message here.

The weatherman predicting disasters, and monsters and devils threatening her

 

Supreme Court outlaws Circuses. A clever idea, instead of hitting on the actual cases, the nightmare of so many rights being lost. But the Supreme Court is set on by lions and lion tamers and ripped apart.

 

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Big Dairy trying to do away with workers by creating a self milking cow. Of course it doesn’t work and the workers come in and carry Big

Dairy away

 

 

Palestine and its tragedy.

This connected to the Rachel Corrie piece from 2007.

 

Assassination of Bishop Romero  The placard says

“Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (Formerly the School of the Americas) continues to train death squads from Latin America

 

Brazil 684,000 Covid Deaths, 23,000 killed by Police, 8,069,000 sq acres of Amazon destroyed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Relentless Covid Epidemic has a fight with underpaid nurses. They win at first but then death is brought back to life and comes after them again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

History of Reparations from Haiti to the present

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The finale. I have a video with music also. Click on it and you can view it.

 

 

 

closing movie

Elka Schumann died August 2021, the brilliant creative brains behind it as well as all the administative work and ten other things. But they are certainly still going strong.

 

Bread and Puppet is also in Turkey at the Istanbul Biennial!! That’s a giant Mother Earth made in Turkey with collaboration of a famous contemporary puppet artist Cengiz Özek Follow the link for a larger image