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Rehearsing with Gods

Photographs and Essays on The Bread & Puppet Theater

by Ronald T. Simon, Marc Estrin

Reviews

Meditation on 40 years of Bread and Puppet

Some books achieve their success by finely balancing meditation and contemplation. Examples include The Compleat Angler by Izaak Walton, and My Dinner with André, by Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory. Such is the case, too, with Rehearsing with Gods: Photographs and Essays on The Bread & Puppet Theater, by Canadian photographer Ronald T. Simon and Burlington writer Marc Estrin. In this marvelous book, the meditative photographs stimulate our inner selves, while the contemplative prose delights and exercises our intellects.

Meditation, whether practiced formally, as in Buddhist sitting or walking forms, or casually, as when we act on a "hunch" is an introspective, thought-less, essentially right-brained activity, from which percolates wisdom. On the other hand, Contemplation -- whether pedantic, as in a class at school, or spontaneous, as in thoughtful problem-solving -- is an outgoing, thought-filled, predominantly left-brained activity, yielding knowledge.

Neither meditation nor contemplation occurs alone. Instead, they overlap each other and, in concert, reveal "big pictures."

Rehearsing with Gods provides personal glimpses into the Glover company which also has performed its social issues-based pageants internationally. Reflecting their longtime close associations with Bread and Puppet, Simon and Estrin provide intimate overviews of its more than 40-year history, tracing its 1963 birth in New York City, to its transplantation to Plainfield, to its final move to Glover. As Grace Paley, Vermont's poet laureate, writes in her foreword:
"Rehearsing with Gods may be the first written by someone who, over the years, has been a participant, a puppeteer, a wearer of dangerous and itchy puppet heads and bodies. This may also be the first book in which text and photographs are of equal weight and beauty in thoughtfulness and importance."

The book contains eight sections, each addressing a common Bread and Puppet (indeed, universal) human archetype: Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread, and Hope. Throughout, Bread and Puppet's adversaries include tyrannical (puppet?) governments, war, greed, hunger, poverty, environmental destruction, disease, fear, racism, and sexism.

In addition to describing some of the company's street, field, and theater programs -- including the discontinued Domestic Resurrection Circus and Pageant weekend circuses -- the book introduces us to the company's drawings, music, signs, flags. As well, Rehearsing with Gods acquaints us with several of Bread and Puppet's enormous trademark puppets, such as Yama, Uncle Fatso, the Garbage Men, and the Population Puppets. The result is a loving tribute to Bread and Puppet's founding couple, Peter and Elka Schumann.

Simon's contemplative photographs, such as "In Memoriam, Everett Kinsey, Circus Finale" (1990), and "Bread, The Banquet" (2001) are simply as they appear: i.e., a man playing a tuba is a man playing a tuba. Such photographs mainly communicate knowledge.

The bulk of the photographs, however, are meditative, for the most part conveying emotions and wisdom. Readers may well find themselves responding strongly to the motherly love and ambiguity in "Black Madonna, from The Banality of Evil" (1988); the "Despairing Lion, from The Pageant" (1994); and the "primal feelings depicted in over life-sized population puppets, from The Triumph of Capitalism" (1991).

Estrin's friendly, compelling words are equal to, albeit the reverse of, Simon's photographs. The essays are at once serious and playful -- no mean accomplishment. Employing a vocabulary ranging from "potchkying" (Yiddish for "dawdling") to "simulacra" (English for "a vague resemblance"), the text is not without humor:

Whatever

the weather.

we'll weather

the weather.

whether

we like it

or not.

Some of the writing summons emotional, meditative responses. Examples include an essay about the death of Bread and Puppet puppeteer Bill Dalrymple (which includes a similarly meditative text by Peter Schumann, concerning a Good King, a Dragon, and a Great Warrior); and a fulsome list of "hopes" for individuals, societies, nature, and the world.

The greater part of Estrin's text, however, is more likely to induce thoughtful, contemplative responses. Examples abound, and include a discussion of Gift-gift; and thoughts on German philosopher Ernst Bloch's book, The Principle of Hope (according to Peter Schumann, "the most important book ever written").

Like its subject, Rehearsing with Gods is an instrument of extravagant joy, celebration, wonder, and hope. It is a book to savor slowly, as it doubly rewards us with meditative sensuality and contemplative stimulation.

--David M. Kaslow, Arts Correspondent
Barre-Montpelier Times Argus, May 14, 2004

The Bread and Puppet Theater, which started in the early '60s on New York's Lower East Side, migrated some years later to its present location in Vermont, and the wide open spaces obviously serve its expansive, anarchic being well. Photographer Simon has conducted a 20-year study of Theater founder Peter Schumann, and Simon's 145 duotone photos show the influences of ancient theater and religions, particularly in the gravity of the massive faces of the puppets, made initially from straw, clay and, according to some alleged medieval German formula, beer. The book is organized around the eight “archetypical” themes of Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread and Hope; however, like Bread and Puppet itself, which combines the creative with the mysterious, themes eddy into other themes. Estrin (InsectDreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa) makes the strong social activist component of the theater clear, in tones that are by turns humorous and revealing, informational and awestruck (especially when it comes to Schumann). But the stars here are the enormous, fantastical creatures that enact possible freedoms each season. (May)

Publisher’s Weekly 5/3/04

"The arts are political, whether they like it or not," Peter Schumann has written, and nowhere have the arts and political activism fused so dramatically and so profoundly as in Schumann's Bread & Puppet Theater. Since 1963, its rent-strike parades, antiwar pageants, and annual (until recently) Domestic Resurrection Circus in Glover, Vermont, have been indelibly impressed upon America's psyche. It is simply not possible to imagine a major peace demonstration without the somber, eloquent presence of Bread & Puppet's bloated capitalists, mournful mothers, and silently marching memetos more. Nor should the company's tonic influence on contemporary theater, from Arm-of-the-Sea to the Broadway blockbusters of Julie Taymor, be understated.

Rehearsing with Gods is the first book about Bread & Puppet to be written by company insiders. Canadian photographer Ronald T. Simon has been documenting Schumann and his troupe for more than two decades; Mark Estrin, a writer, cellist, and activist, is a self-described "geezer puppeteer" who was touring Europe with the company on little more than bread, garlic, and onions in the early '70s. Their book, as Simon notes, "is not meant to be an objective document…but an interpretive one." To that end, they have selected eight archetypal themes--Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread, and Hope--to serve as Kindling for Estrin's poetic essays and motley umbrellas for Simon's photographs. The latter are as intimate as you would expect, given the photographer's proximity to the performers, and as stately, haunting, elegiac, and joyful as the burning effigies, mute beasts, white-clad dancers, headless giants, and related marvels and mysteries they depict.

At a moment when those in power are decidedly more grotesque than rough-hewn puppets of papier-mâché, Rehearsing with Gods is a crucial reminder that a community of artists can make a difference. The utopian, grandly anarchic vision of Peter Schumann and Bread & Puppet Theater--which insists, among other things, upon art being food, and being available to everybody, cheap--is more necessary now than ever to our survival, both materially and spiritually. "Does Bread & Puppet give me hope?" Estrin asks. "Yes," he answers, uncorking a rhapsody of affirmations: "Hope that the best things in life will not be things . . . hope that there is still and alternative to There Is No Alternative . . . hope that neither bread nor puppets can ever be defeated."

--Mikhail Horowitz
Chronogram: Arts, Culture, Spirit May, 2004

Sunday Magazine
Books & Authors: In praise of Bread & Puppet - Jul. 31, 2004
By Melissa MacKenzie

In the preface Simon calls Schumann's bigger-than-life theatrical art "sculptural storytelling," which uses "a visual language where the syntax is humanism and the only verb, in a social-political sense, is to act."

Life and freedom are never defeated during a Bread & Puppet play even though the good hearts of people are constantly threatened by evil forces, including politicians.

Peter Schumann of Glover and his Bread & Puppet Theater have been addressing social injustices since the troupe's founding in New York City in 1963, when the big issue was the Vietnam War. So, for more than 40 years Bread & Puppet has performed in everything from hand-and-rod puppet shows to giant outdoor spectacles in farmers' fields. The puppeteers' trademark props - huge, unwieldy hand-made clay heads, Uncle Sam in top hat on 18-feet high stilts, the wonky Bread & Puppet school bus, to name but three - have become familiar to tens of thousands of loyal fans.

Rehearsing With Gods is an interpretive history of the phenomenon of Bread & Puppet. The story is informally told in a series of thoughtful essays by writer/musician and long-time puppeteer Marc Estrin of Burlington. Estrin's prose is balanced by Canadian photographer Ronald T. Simon's extraordinary black-and-white photos.

Simon, who first attended Bread & Puppet in 1979, describes its creator, Peter Schumann, 68, as a painter with a brush "the size of a pine tree," whose palette contains metaphors of characters and objects.

In the preface Simon calls Schumann's bigger-than-life theatrical art "sculptural storytelling," which uses "a visual language where the syntax is humanism and the only verb, in a social-political sense, is to act."

In their book Estrin and Simon reflect separately on archetypal themes and characters - death, fiends, beasts, humans, giving and hope - which have engaged Peter and Elka Schumann and Bread & Puppet casts over the years. The combination of words and photos is unusual because Estrin's text does not comment on Simon's photos, nor do Simon's photos illustrate Estrin's text. Yet it all works.

It falls to Estrin, 64, a cellist with the Vermont Philharmonic Orchestra and the Montpelier Chamber Orchestra, to tell the entertaining history of the theater, and how Bread & Puppet's bizarre forms of magic are created. At the same time Estrin can't help but wryly wonder at the mystery of it all.

Estrin is the author of the much-praised, philosophical novel, "Insect Dreams: The Half Life of Gregor Samsa," that was published in 2002. His writing style in this new book is a compelling mix of serious ponderings on the theater's archetypal themes, and humorous recollections of performances and incidences over the years. His stories make "Rehearsal With Gods" one of those rare, thoughtful books that are hard to put down.

Reflecting on death, for example, in an essay titled, "Ashes to Ashes, Clay to Clay," Estrin muses about our culture's tendency to deny or ignore death's very real existence. "What an oddity, this pretense," he writes. "Who that turn their backs on death can truly be alive? We all set out on journeys in boats we know will sink," he writes, mentioning at one point the death of puppeteer Bill Dalrymple, who was killed in a head-on crash shortly after a performance.

Estrin describes how Peter Schumann and the puppeteers sculpt the huge clay ears and hands worn in the pageants and how, after each final performance, all the clay ears and hands, the bodies, are watered down to a "primordial ooze," as the creators destroy their own creations.

Several years ago, during a pageant in Glover attended by 25,000 people from all over New England, a man was killed in one of the overnight camps. Peter Schumann decided, then and there, to end the theater's once-a-year productions. In its place would come a new theater, a resurrected circus, which would happen every Sunday during the summer. There would be other shows as well.

And today, as in the past, audiences flock to Glover. The show goes on, timely and outrageous as ever. Former puppeteers bring their children and grandchildren. Or they watch their own children, differently costumed, playing roles occasioned by today's world events.

Writer, activist and poet Grace Paley of Thetford first performed with Bread & Puppet in a Christmas production of "Everyman" in the mid-sixties in New York. "... I was to my surprise one of the "begetters," who walked biblically in and out and around into the light, named, begetting from well before David to Jesus himself," she recalls in "Rehearsing With Gods."

"Bread & Puppet is also a community. ...," Paley says. "Children have grown up in it beginning as a cloud, a bird; graduating to stilt walking higher and higher. My grandson has been drumming since the age of six in the Bread & Puppet band, which sings us into the Sunday circus. It is an adult theater world to which the young are admitted if they are able to be serious, responsible. I believe they are receiving the moral education that does not exist in school or playgrounds," Paley says in the book.

Attending Bread & Puppet plays is a larger-than-life experience that leaves a stimulating aftertaste. Rehearsing With Gods, for the initiated, provides a many-textured album of those experiences. For those who have yet to see the puppeteers in action, the book is a truthful introduction to the pageantry. Most of all, Rehearsing With Gods offers a resounding tribute to Peter Schumann for his unique contribution to American theater.

Melissa MacKenzie-- Vermont Sunday Magazine