Date: Thu, 25 Sep 2003 00:02:56 -0400
Subject: PUPT: Free! Bread and Puppet Performance in Philadelphia Area!
From: robert smythe <robertsmythe-AT-mumpuppet.org>



The Department of Theater at Swarthmore College is happy to invite you 
to the Bread and Puppet Theater in a performance of The Insurrection 
Mass With Funeral March for a Rotten Idea this Saturday, September 27, 
at 3 pm in the Scott Outdoor Amphitheater (in case of rain, the 
performance will be held in the Pearson-Hall Theater in the Lang 
Performing Arts Center). The performance is free and open to the 
public. Families are welcome. The Insurrection Mass lasts about one 
hour and will be followed by the distribution of sourdough rye bread 
baked fresh in a brick oven which Peter Schumann, founder and director 
of the Theater, will build on campus. There will be no intermission. 
For more information, please call 610-690-5747.

The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 on New York City's 
Lower East Side by Silesian-born sculptor and choreographer, Peter 
Schumann. After a four-year residency at Goddard College, the Theater 
moved to their permanent home on a farm in Glover, Vermont in 1974. 
Until 1998, an annual performance known as Our Domestic Ressurrection 
Circus was held at the farm in late August, drawing crowds of up to 
40,000. Now the Theater produces a lively ongoing summer season from 
June through the end of August with  the help of an internship company. 
During the rest of the year, The Bread and Puppet Theater tours its 
indoor shows and massive outdoor spectacles in the United States, 
Europe and Latin America. Their pageants have a broad theme-oriented 
appeal to large non-elite audiences. They address social, political and 
environmental issues, or simply the common urgencies of our lives.

Peter Schumann says: The Insurrection Mass with Funeral March for a 
Rotten Idea is a non-religious service in the presence of several paper 
maché gods. The rotten idea, which gets explained and buried, is 
usually derived from some recent political-economical event or idea 
which deserves burial. The Mass comes complete with secular scripture 
readings, a fiddle sermon, and hymns in which the public is invited to 
participate. The puppets are made of cardboard; the music is live and 
includes an ancient Georgian chant. As part of The Insurrection Mass, 
Bread and Puppet will show How to Turn Distress into Success: A Parable 
of War and Its Making.

Jules Rabin of The Times Argus writes "Distress refers to the fall of 
the World Trade Center's Twin Towers depicted by two tottering seven 
foot tall cardboard rectangles... it also refers, with gripping effect, 
to a single grieving mother - a universal Mater Dolorosa - who sees her 
baby tumble out of the rickety old baby carriage she has brought to 
rest in front of the Towers." "Something about this performance touches 
deeply, reaching those recesses of the mind usually obscured by the 
distractions of daily grind" (Jerome Lipari, The Times Argus).

Peter Schumann and The Bread and Puppet Theater have received the Obie 
Award, the Erasmus Award from Amsterdam, the Vermont Governor's Award 
for Excellence in the Arts, and the Puppeteers of America Award. Bread 
and Puppet is one of the oldest nonprofit, self-supporting theater 
companies in the United States.

Bread and Puppet's performance is made possible by the William J. 
Cooper Serendipity Fund, the Departments of English, Religion, and 
Theater, the Dean's Office, Drama Board, and the School in Rose Valley.



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