Happy Birthday! Bread And Puppet Marks 50 Years Of Paper Mache And Protest

If you don't know B&P (and you probably do even if you don't know that you do), you should. I'm fortunate enough to live down the road a few miles from the farm and in years gone by, I used to volunteer to be in the pageant and circus. I still think that for sheer joy and jaw dropping beauty the Circus and Pageant has anything I've ever seen in the way of art, beat.

Bread and has been a familiar presence at political demonstrations since the anti-war protests of the 1960s. Its giant puppets and raucous brass band also marched against wars in Central America, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 1982, Bread and Puppet led a parade in New York that, according to police estimates, consisted of more than a half-million anti-nuclear protesters. Though massive street protests may be a thing of the past, Bread and Puppet's work is still unapologetically political as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.

is based on a farm in northern Vermont, about 25 miles from the Canadian border. There's a pine forest on the property with small, colorful huts that memorialize puppeteers who have passed, and a huge barn jammed with the company's puppets, some of them nearly

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The company eventually moved to Goddard College in Vermont where it was theater in residence for four years before getting its own farm. It was there that Paul Zaloom joined the company. He went on to an Obie Award-winning career of his own and to star in the children's TV show Beakman's World.

"Being a member of the Bread and Puppet Theater was really the coolest and best thing that ever happened to me," Zaloom says. "I loved being in puppet shows. I loved the politics of the theater, the aesthetics, the camaraderie we all had, the relationship we had to the community. I feel very lucky and very privileged I was a member of the company."

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http://www.npr.org/2013/08/24/214818319/bread-and-puppet-celebrates-50-years-of-paper-mache-and-protest

Images:

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=519&q=Bread+and+Puppet&oq=Bread+and+Puppet&gs_l=img.12..0l10.2375.5960.0.8858.16.12.0.4.4.0.244.1632.3j8j1.12.0....0...1ac.1.25.img..3.13.1152.nF286wKvBvY

wanna buy some cheap art?

http://breadandpuppet.org/