Bread & Puppet Theater

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Mark Dannenhauer

A giant puppet holds a person.

A Bread and Puppet Theater creation.

This groundbreaking political puppet theater, founded in 1963, is on a rare cross country tour and making a stop in Mazomanie, thanks to that community's Wild Rumpus Circus/Mazo Movement Arts Center. The show, The Apocalypse Defiance Circus, encompasses many puppetry styles. And the puppets are big! Big puppets, with masks and stilts — in a number of short performances dealing with everything from the pandemic to climate change. Suggested donation $10-$25, but no one is turned away for lack of funds. After the show, Bread & Puppet will serve its traditional sourdough rye bread.

media release: The circus is coming! The circus is coming! Bread & Puppet Theater is making a rare cross-country tour this fall, with performances coast to coast, from New York to Seattle, Los Angeles to New Orleans, and even in Mazomanie, Wisconsin! The iconic political puppet theater company is bringing The Apocalypse Defiance Circus to over 50 cities and towns. 

Bread and Puppet Theater will present "The Apocalypse Defiance Circus" on Tuesday Sept. 27, at 6:30 p.m, outdoors in downtown Mazomanie, WI (Performing Arts Pavilion). The performance is by suggested donation ( $10-25) with no one turned away for lack of funds. The show is approximately one hour long.

The Apocalypse Defiance Circus, is a bright, raucous melee of short acts governed by a brass band, addressing the heart of the current moment with diverse puppetry styles and spanning many moods, from slapstick to the sublime.

The show’s director, Peter  Schumann, asserts the show is “in response to our totally unresurrected capitalist situation, 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. Since we earthlings do not live up to our earthling obligations, we need resurrection circuses to yell against our own stupidity.”

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.

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.

Bread and Puppet’s performance in Mazomanie is hosted by the Wild Rumpus CIrcus/Mazo Movement Arts Center, which has been creating hands-on circus, theater and movement experiences for youth through seniors since 2001. ”We are honored and excited to share the work that we have been inspired by for decades with our local community,” states Wild Rumpus Circus’ co-director, Marcia Miquelon. Co-sponsors of this special visit include Dane Arts and WORT-FM.