Glover, Vt., is lovely at this time of year.
The verdure is straight out of the Hudson River School. Clouds project pools of shadow on the mountains. You wouldn’t expect the town to be a hub of political angst.
However, it’s home to Bread and Puppet, a theater group and paper mache museum founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann in Manhattan. The organization migrated to an expansive property in Vermont in 1974, where visitors come to watch puppet performances on Sunday afternoons, eat fresh pumpernickel bread and buy letterpress prints in their “Cheap Art” store.
I went to “The Whole Kit and Caboodle” show on July 7. I was impressed by the artistry of the paper mache and performance, but I found their approach to depicting politics woefully un-self-aware.
The show, which ran for approximately 90 minutes, was a series of abstract vignettes that dealt with the themes of democracy, populism and genocide. It reminded me of something that I would see at La Mama — an experimental theater club on the Lower East Side of Manhattan — and then never totally come to terms with.
During one of my favorite scenes, members of the company hopped forward with a large paper mache person in front of them. “We! We! We!” they screeched, moving forward toward the audience. To me, the puppet they held in front of them represented their political self, potentially a comment on how western democracy distances us from our individuality as we are subsumed into a sea of constituents.
A woman in stilts and a top hat hobbled out onto stage and a large poster dropped behind her as the chorus repeated after her. At the end, the group chanted that the “genocide” in Gaza should not be in their name or with their money. The whole piece questioned the effectiveness of American institutions at representing the will of the people.
When it was all over, everyone milled about the farm, munching on freshly baked pumpernickel with garlic aioli smeared on top. An actor distributed zines made by Schumann, a variety of absurd and political little messages. Visitors filtered through the shop, full of posters condemning rapacious capitalism — one pushed back against the idea that art requires money and called for the creation of “cheap art.”
Theirs is an easy politics to get on board with: I’d love to eat bread, make paper mache and walk through the Green Mountains every day for the rest of my life. Plus, I believe in the importance of political art and speaking out against wrong, even if it’s far away from where you are. But the show had no acknowledgement of the privilege of being supported by a wealthy community where visitors can throw a hundred dollar bill in the suggested donation box. There is a fundamental discord between professionally creating art in a barn in Vermont and condemning the elite.
Additionally, some of their messaging felt inconsistent. At the end, for example, the group gathered in a semi-circle, with Schumann in the middle. He played a single-stringed cello and moaned. I liked it. But then, the actors around him banged on their violins and pretended to play their instruments — and he lost me. This felt sacrosanct. Are instruments and music really part of the institution he wants to reject?
The name “bread and puppet” is profoundly political, suggesting one can have wealth, comfort and community alongside art. I would counter with the idea that most are forced to choose between the two.
Rating: ★★★
