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Date: 9/5/2023
EASTHAMPTON — When the world famous Bread and Puppet Theater performs this year at the Park Hill Orchard on Sept. 10 there’ll be lots of places to sit, but no tickets.
“There are no tickets,” said Russell Braen, co-owner of Park Hill Orchard. “No one’s turned away. If you don’t care to, or don’t have donation money, it’s no problem at all.”
As if free entertainment by a famous troupe of puppeteers isn’t sufficiently singular, the show will be staged among the apple trees and sculptures of the Art in the Orchard walk. The half mile loop of 3D pieces, created by 33 sculptors, circles through the audience area, among the trees and around the grounds of the fruit farm.
For many families, the trees, artwork and puppetry have become an annual staple. Park Hill Orchard began hosting Bread and Puppet Theater in 2015, when the troupe drew 400 people after four days of publicity. That year, Peter Schumann, founder of the troupe, pulled from storage all the puppets and props for the show, Fire, that propelled him to international fame. The legendary play was first staged in
New York City in the 1960s.
Beginning in 1968, in more than half a century of touring and performing, Bread and Puppet Theater won distinction at festivals in Italy, Poland, Columbia, Yugoslavia and France. Calling Glover, Vermont its home, the group won the Vermont Governor’s Award, the President Award of the Puppeteers of America and four Obie Awards for off-Broadway theatre. Hewing to the group’s quirky roots, performances usually end with the audience being fed sourdough bread with aioli sauce.
According to a press release, this year’s show will tap into traditional circus staging combined with puppets, costumes and props familiar to Bread and Puppet fans. An unruly brass band, stilt dancers and paper mache beasts will carry off a “colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.” While conveying the joy of puppetry, Schumann and the company often build political commentary into a work.
This year’s show is “in response to our totally unresurrected capitalist situation,” Schumann said. “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.”
The revolt Schumann referred to may be global warming and the new normal of cataclysmic weather events. One such event, the late freeze on May 17, cost Park Hill Orchard its apple crop this year. The blossoms were ruined and the trees stand bare of fruit. Other orchards in the area pledged apples for the puppet show, the farmstand will be open, so a painful reminder of human folly instead shows a positive, the importance of community support for farmers.
“The sustainable farming movement, one of the pillars of that is…support for your farm,” Braen said. “This offers people a way to support the farm…It allows us to sell our product directly to the people who will eat it, all of it. So it’s actually rooted in the principles of sustainable farming.”
Caitlin Ross, a performer with Bread and Puppet Theater, a resident of France, acknowledged the company often performs highly political theatre. This year’s show, the Heart of the Matter Circus, also shows off the many different ways each actor participates.
“The circus has such a…wide range of acts, two to three minute acts,” Ross said. “Maybe in a one act you’re stilting and you’re dancing, in a costume, and then you go back stage and change and now you’re a blue horse and you’ll be prancing around the stage. Then you’ll drop that back stage and become part of a chorus…There are so many different ways of performing in the circus that you get a really big variety as a performer.”
Ross said Bread and Puppet Theatre is unique in the way it tours. The company stays at the venues hosting performances or with past members of the company. The company’s famous bus carries actors, props and puppets from show to show, but also often doubles as a bunkhouse.
“The theatre is based on an old dairy farm,” Ross said. “We have a garden and an old farmhouse. Some people stay in the farmhouse, and then we travel in school buses, repurposed school buses, and many of our old school buses become housing…We also have apprentices come and they will tent.”
Bread and Puppet Theater will perform at Park Hill Orchard on Sept. 10. A 4:30 p.m. arrival time is recommended to give theatre goers time to walk to the stage area for the 5:30 p.m. curtain.