Bread and Puppet Theater: The Sourdough Philosophy Spectacle (recommended for ages 12 and up)

Back by popular demand, the award-winning Bread and Puppet Theater, featuring Artistic Director Peter Schumann and his troupe of 4 Vermont puppeteers, returns for a third year to the Cyclorama bringing their signature powerful imagery, masked characters, and giant papier-mâché puppets. The Sourdough Philosophy Spectacle is about the need for human fermentation. It takes a lesson from how apple cider is made. Our republic teases us with the possibility of democracy, but citizens are raised like military apple orchards, pruned down to their predictable minimums, yielding controlled fruits that lack the ecstasy of nature. However, human fermentation occurs in parts of the human body that are not governed by the government, like the guts and the gutsy parts of the brain. Fermented citizens are corrupted by the ecstasy of nature and from that corruption, derive strength to corrupt military-orchard citizens. The show is run by a bunch of cooks, specialists in cooking the various stews and pancakes of our everyday first world existence. Performed by Peter Schumann and the Bread & Puppet Company, along with a large number of local volunteer puppeteers and musicians. Informal talk back with the artists follows each performance. After the show, there will be an opportunity to savor Schumann’s famous sourdough rye bread, smeared with garlic aioli, and to purchase the theater’s legendary “cheap art.”