****This show is brought to you with support from Paul Merrill and Catherine Merrill (B&P Actor, Fire, 1965)****

The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger. Annual presentations for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day often included children and adults from the community as participants. Many performances were done in the street. During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people.

In 1974 Bread and Puppet moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The 140-year old hay barn was transformed into a museum for veteran puppets. Our Domestic Resurrection Circus, a two day outdoor festival of puppetry shows, was presented annually through 1998.

The company makes its income from touring new and old productions both on the American continent and abroad, and from sales of Bread and Puppet Press’ posters and publications. The traveling puppet shows range from tightly composed theater pieces presented by members of the company to extensive outdoor pageants which require the participation of many volunteers.

Today, Bread and Puppet continues to be one of the oldest, nonprofit, political theatre companies in the country.

Show title: Inflammatory Earthling Rants (with help from Kropotkin)

Show description: Earthlings are now aflame and consequently need inflammatory rants, directed against the arsonist: Western Civilization and its incompetent government. The habitual pragmatic communication jargon won’t do, so the ranters have to resort to the original language which was tasked to employ the spells, charms, and incantations needed to confront the disaster in order to instigate change – with help from Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid ideology.

Doors are at 6pm, show begins at 7pm, followed by serving of bread, selling of art!