Bread & Puppet Circus
courtesy Bread and Puppet Circus
A 2026 Bread and Puppet Circus performance.
Bread and Puppet Circus
media release: The Bread & Puppet Circus returns to Mazomanie, WI! Join us for The Upside Down Circus!
Entry: $20 tickets, no one turned away for lack of funds.
The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is hitting the road! This September and October, The Upside Down World Circus will tour the northeast, midwest, and south with puppets big and small, acts serious and silly, and performances slapstick and sublime. Stilt dancers, paper maché beasts, and a riotous brass band make a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.
With this show, director Peter Schumann asks, “Is it or is it not? Am I asleep or am I awake? Am I a cockroach or am I a me?” He continues with a distinctly B&P call to action: “Possibilitarians! We must demonstrate humanity’s upside-down situation in the face of the government’s depraved falsehoods. Luxury silence and despair must be replaced by revolt orchestras that radically oppose the radically wrong system. It is time to unforget the revolution-in-progress and aim for the evermore on the universe’s shore.”
After the 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.
Now in its 63rd year, Bread & Puppet will make stops in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ypsilanti, Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Decatur, Cincinnati, and more. In all, the company plans 40 shows in 35 places across 2 months on the road. Ticket prices vary by venue, but as with all B&P shows, no one is ever turned away for lack of funds. For more details and the full tour schedule, head to BreadAndPuppet.org/tour.
BREAD AND PUPPET THEATER
The Bread and 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 and Puppet is recognized throughout the world and has won distinction at international theater 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 is constantly active, performing at its farm in Glover, VT, and in local churches, schools and parades. It 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 theatrical companies in the country.
