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View ProfilesPublished August 30, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Burning Man has nothing on Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater. When I moved here in 1978, everyone in the know made the August pilgrimage to Glover for its two-day Domestic Resurrection Circus. Scattered throughout the forest were pop-up performances about greedy capitalists, obscure foreign wars, environmental degradation. Later in the day, the action moved to a natural amphitheater for a version of the "circus" that Bread and Puppet still performs on summer weekends. After that came the pageant. It usually began with giant puppets rising up behind a distant hill and ended in flames.
If you weren't hallucinating, you might think you were.
Holding the animated papier-mâché sculptures aloft, and often running fast with them, were people of all ages, shapes and sizes clad in white. While most of the audience focused on the puppets, I studied the humans manipulating them. Their task looked hard — and hot! — but joyful. I learned that Bread and Puppet is powered by these volunteers devoted to the cause of its founding ringmaster, the German-born artist Peter Schumann. They live communally on the farm, sharing meals, chores, and the experience of making, performing and being art.
The idea appealed to me. Decades later, it enticed one of our writers, too.
In July, Chelsea Edgar "ran away" to join Vermont's most unusual circus, a singular troupe that, without seeking grants or media attention, has performed worldwide to great acclaim for 60 years. Her goal, she told me, was "to be in the slipstream of the place and get a taste of what that felt like." The last reporter to have such unfettered access to the inner workings of Bread and Puppet was Edward Hoagland, who wrote a piece about the theater company for Vanity Fair in 1983.
As Chelsea quickly learned, "There is just so much shit happening all the time, you can't possibly experience it all," she said. To accurately convey the creative chaos, she devoted a full month to reporting this week's cover story, "Circus of Life." That's three times longer than she spent milking cows on a Vermont dairy farm for her last immersive writing project for Seven Days. She toiled alongside other Schumann acolytes, doing whatever was needed, from picking bits of cardboard out of the grass to joining a team of five charged with holding up the left wrist of the iconic Mother Earth puppet.
"I was nothing, a tiny cog in a glorious machine," Chelsea wrote of the experience that informed the 7,000-word piece. On a personal level, she said it was "transformative" to swap a life of reading, writing and laptops for one of making things with other people in the service of someone else's art. Journalists aren't usually active participants in the things they write about, but here Chelsea took the "being there" approach to gonzo levels.
Taking notes while scrambling around with the other puppeteers was a challenge, so, at the end of each day, she tried to record her observations via voice memos, usually in an outhouse — "the only place you can really be alone at Bread and Puppet," she noted. She made friends she hopes to keep.
She spent time with Schumann, too. The 89-year-old artist continues to work constantly, and obsessively, despite having suffered two strokes since his wife and collaborator, Elka, died two years ago. He talked openly with Chelsea about his death and legacy, but the words "succession plan" never passed his lips. "The people who are involved with the theater recognize that this is sort of a poignant moment," Chelsea said. "There's this great uncertainty about what will become of the theater when he's gone."
Not surprisingly, writers for a number of national media outlets, including the New York Times, also made the trek to Glover this summer. But none played a garbageman in the circus. This week Seven Days brings you a rare and intimate look at Bread and Puppet Theater, one of Vermont's greatest cultural treasures, from the inside.
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