Bread and Puppet Theater returns to the Cyclorama -- in late January 2015

BREAD & PUPPET

“Captain Boycott”
[recommended for 12 & up]
and
“The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus”
[recommended for everyone]

January 24 thru February 1, 2015
in the Cyclorama

“Captain Boycott ... wastes no time getting to the point.”
(The Indypendent, NYC, December 2014)

Bread & Puppet Theater in the Cyclorama. Residency includes “Captain Boycott” [recommended for ages 12 & up], along with “The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus” [recommended for everyone] and a visual art installation created by the theater’s artistic director Peter Schumann. Performances and exhibit run January 24 through February 1, 2015. Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA), 539 Tremont St., South End, Boston 02116 [conveniently located near the MBTA Orange Line & bus connections]. Tickets for the performances available for purchase in the Cyclorama [cash or check only] one hour before each show. For advance tickets: www.breadandpuppet.org, 866-811-4111 (toll free). Further information, call the Boston-area Bread & Puppet Theater hot line: 617-286-6694.

In keeping with their long standing tradition of “sublime arsekicking puppetry,” the award-winning Vermont-based Bread & Puppet Theater, featuring Artistic Director Peter Schumann and his troupe of puppeteers, returns to the Cyclorama at the BCA, bringing their signature powerful imagery, masked characters, and giant papier-mâché puppets. Their nine day residency includes the evening show “Captain Boycott” (recommended for ages 12 & up), performances of “The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus” (recommended for everyone), a political art installation conceived by Schumann, along with the sale of Bread & Puppet’s legendary Cheap Art and the opportunity to savor Schumann’s home-made sourdough rye bread spread with garlic-laden aioli.

All the visuals are created by Schumann, including sculpting and painting of all the major masks and puppets, with input from the company. Although all Bread & Puppet events have a seriousness of purpose — a few laughs are always thrown in!

“Bread & Puppet’s performance piece .... easily one of its darkest and most gauntly beautiful ... a stark excursion into the melancholic and downright disconcerting.”
(included in Best Stage Productions of 2014, artsfuse.org, Bread & Puppet’s “The Shatterer of Worlds“ presented last January in the Cyclorama)

Detailed listings information:
Evening Performances [recommended for ages 12 & up]:
Bread & Puppet Theater: “Captain Boycott”
January 28-February 1, Wed.-Sun., 7:00 pm
General admission $18, $13 students/seniors, $10 for kids 11 & under (although not recommended for this age group)
Running time: approximately 1.5 hours with a brief intermission.
Description of “Captain Boycott”:
A puppet show in 3 chapters, the first 2 chapters create the context for the uprising that is the central theme for the 3rd chapter:
Chapter 1) A Thing Done In A Seeing Place (a modern Antigone);
Chapter 2) The Horizontalists (about the anti-historic philosophy of horizontalism, which casts light on historic events);
Chapter 3) Captain Boycott (Boycott’s victory over the Captain who bears that name and who in 1880 was pulled off his high horse by his own peasants and had his name removed from his self and fitted to thousands of rebellions and protests. The issue is the endless reoccurrences of captainly oppression, whether military or economic. The title of the backdrop of this chapter, “Men And Women With Sticks,” refers to the 15th and 16th century precedents to Captain Boycott: the peasants revolt in the Black Forest and the Upper Rhine Valleys).
The play is performed in collaboration with a large group of local volunteers. After each performance, the audience is invited to eat home-made sourdough rye bread spread with aioli, and to peruse the Cheap Art posters and banners for sale.

Family-Friendly Performances:
Bread & Puppet Theater: “The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus”
January 24-25, Sat. at 3:00 pm, Sun. at 3:00 pm & 7:00 pm
General admission $18, $13 students/seniors, $10 for kids 11 & under (kids 2 & under free)
Running time: approximately 1 hour w/o intermission.
Description of “The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus”:
The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus is for the not yet existing upriser masses and their kids who need to practice their upriser skills by teaming up with butterflies, cockroaches and elephants. Lions, horses and dogs are also employed to invent the correct rhythmical patterns that fight planetary destruction. The boot flags of the 15th century peasant revolution lead the way, with a lively brass band. Bread & Puppet’s “Circus” acts can often be politically puzzling to adults, but accompanying kids can usually explain them:
“Schumann’s subversive message of the need to resist becomes abundantly clear, first when he offers a short history lesson on the meaning of the word “boycott,” complete with a giant puppet of namesake Captain Charles Boycott, and then in a hilarious tiger-taming circus routine in which the seemingly complacent tigers finally turn the tables on their zany trainer.” (Boston Globe review of “The Nothing Is Not Ready Circus” presented outdoors on Magazine Beach (Cambridge) in late August 2014)
The show is performed in collaboration with a large group of local volunteers. After each performance, the audience is welcome to inspect masks and puppets and to peruse the Cheap Art posters and banners for sale.

Visual Art Exhibit:
Bread and Puppet Theater: visual art installation created by Peter Schumann.
Jan. 27-Feb. 1, Tues.-Sun.
Free and open to all.
Description: Bread and Puppet Theater Artistic Director Peter Schumann’s most recent visual art exploration which speaks to matters that concern us all.
Exhibit details:
—Tues.-Fri., Jan. 27-30: regular Cyclorama hours: 9:00 am-5:00 pm [Thursday & Friday hours extended up to and after the evening performances].
—Sat. & Sun., Jan. 31 & Feb. 1: one hour before and after each evening performance.

BRIEF BACKGROUND ON BREAD & PUPPET THEATER

Now in its 51st year, the Bread & Puppet Theater is one of the oldest and most unique self-sustaining nonprofit theater companies in the United States. The theater champions a visually rich slapstick style of street-theater that is filled with huge puppets made of paper maché and cardboard, combined with masked characters, improvisational dance movement, political commentary, and a lively brass band. The company’s performances are described by The New York Times as “a spectacle for the heart and soul.”

Bread & Puppet is based on a farm in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom. The theater was founded in 1963 on the Lower East Side of New York City by Peter Schumann, a German born artist-dancer, and for the next decade his giant puppets figured prominently in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in New York City, Washington DC and other cities in the US and abroad. Indoor performances were both simple and more complex, ranging from quiet, intense masked shows (“Fire”, “Man Says Good-Bye”) with 4-6 players, to huge, lengthy spectacles (“Cry of the People for Meat”).

In 1970, an invitation from Vermont’s Goddard College to be theater-in-residence, facilitated a longed-for change to country life. The theater’s renowned “Our Domestic Resurrection Circus,” a two day outdoor festival of music, art, puppetry and pageantry, began back then at Goddard, and ran almost every summer – first at Goddard from 1970-1973, then continuing up through 1998 at the theater’s current home in Glover, VT -- drawing crowds of tens of thousands. Since then, a smaller (but with giant puppets intact), more dispersed version continues on Sundays in July and August; the company continues touring and workshopping the rest of the year in New England and around the globe; and Schumann continues as director and artist — and bread baker — with a vengeance!

www.breadandpuppet.org