PUTNEY — Next Stage Arts Project will present its eighth socially distanced, outdoor event - Bread and Puppet Theater's “The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus” - on Saturday, Oct. 10 at 3 p.m. on the Hickory Ridge Road soccer field in Putney.
Bring lawn chairs or blankets for outdoor seating in distanced pods on the field, and face masks to wear whenever you leave your pod. Rain date for the performance is Wednesday, Oct. 14.
“The Insurrection-Resurrection Service Circus” is this summer's contribution to the iconic Bread and Puppet Circus tradition beloved by audiences worldwide for nearly two generations - a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment using diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.
Bread and Puppet's founder and director, Peter Schumann, said in a news release that the show is “a service for citizens, aliens, and immigrants alike to demonstrate the ills that inspire uprising against callously incompetent government and the tragedies that result from that callous incompetence and call for resurrection.”
After the shows, Bread and Puppet will serve sourdough rye bread with aioli. The company's “cheap art” - books, posters, postcards, pamphlets, and banners from the Bread and Puppet Press - will be for sale.
Bread and Puppet Theater describes itself as “an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick. Its shows are political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of papier maché and cardboard.”
Founded in 1963 by Schumann on New York City's Lower East Side, the theater has been based in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom since the early 1970s.