Bread and Puppet Theatre: Art and Activism in Five Acts

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 pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people.

In 1974, Peter Schumann and his wife Elka, moved Bread and Puppet to a farm in Glover, Vermont where the company resides to this day. As Bread and Puppet Theater approaches 60 years young, Schumann’s visionary melding of art, activism, puppetry, street theater and sourdough bread remains a North star for all who follow in this work.

This exhibition, curated by Clare Dolan, will present a history of Bread and Puppet Theater’s projects from the 1960’s to the present. It will feature the various visual forms the collective has created including drawings, paintings and sculptures.

EXHIBITION EVENTS

October 24
Curator Talk, 12:30-1:30 pm
MLK Room, Ellison Campus Center

Reception, 1:30-3:30 pm
Commuter Lounge

November 2 and November 9
Gallery Discussions, 12:30-1:30 pm
Winfisky Gallery

About the curator

Clare Dolan is a painter, director, performer, curator, and intensive care unit nurse living in Northeast Vermont. As a puppeteer with the Bread and Puppet Theater for decades, she performed in cities and towns throughout the United States and internationally.

In 2010, Clare created The Museum of Everyday Life, an ongoing multifaceted museum experiment that’s goal is a slow-motion cataloging of life via ordinary objects of no monetary value, yet immense consequence. She is a specialist in picture-story performance (cantastoria) and the co-founder of Banners and Cranks, the first international American festival devoted to this performance form, which occurs annually in rotating venues.