FARMINGTON – The Emery Community Arts Center welcomes Bread & Puppet Theater to the University of Maine at Farmington campus to perform their new piece, “Our Domestic Resurrection Circus: Apocalypse Defiance,” on Sept. 9.
The show will take place at 8 p.m., with doors opening at 7:30 p.m. General admission is a suggested donation of $10 to $25, with no one turned away for lack of funds. Student admission is free. Tickets will be available at the door beginning at 7 p.m. on the evening of the performance. To reserve tickets in advance, please contact Lisa Gallant (e.mail: lisagall@maine.edu, phone: 207-778-7199).
A classic returns with Bread and Puppet Theater’s “Our Domestic Resurrection Circus: Apocalypse Defiance” to address the urgent stories and questions of the day! This rollicking spectacle of protest and celebration features flag wavers, cardboard clowns, prancing blue horses, and Bread & Puppet’s Doing-The-Best-We-Can Brass Band. The show, says director Peter Schumann, is “in response to our totally unresurrected capitalist situation, not only the hundreds of thousands of unnecessarily sacrificed pandemic victims but our culture’s unwillingness to recognize Mother Earth’s revolt against our civilization. Since we earthlings do not live up to our earthling obligations, we need resurrection circuses to yell against our own stupidity.”
The Bread & Puppet Theater is an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick. Believing that theater is a basic necessity like bread, the company frequently brings its work to the streets for those who may not otherwise go to the theater. Its shows are political and spectacular, with puppets often on stilts, wearing huge masks with expressive faces, singing, dancing and playing music.
Bread & Puppet is recognized throughout the world and has won distinction at festivals in Italy, Poland, Colombia, and Yugoslavia, beginning with their break-out performances at the 1968 Nancy Festival in France. Notable awards include the Erasmus Prize of Amsterdam, 4 Obies, the Puppeteers of America’s President Award, and the Vermont Governor’s Award. Bread and Puppet regularly tours Europe, Canada, and the United States and has recently visited El Salvador, Haiti, Russia, and Korea.
Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side, the theater has been based in the North East Kingdom of Vermont since the early 1970s and is one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theater companies in the country.
After each show, Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread & Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press – will be for sale.
