[act-ma] 1/23-1/29 Bread and Puppet Theater's "Attica" and "Man of Flesh and Cardboard" w/ "Man=Carrot Circus" at the Cyclorama -- week of Jan. 23rd, 2012
Charlie Welch
cwelch at tecschange.org
Sun Jan 22 06:03:24 PST 2012
**BREAD AND PUPPET THEATER***
*
*/Attica/**/
/*and*/
Man of Flesh and Cardboard/**/
/*along with
*/Man = Carrot Circus
/*(family-friendly)*/
/***Boston****Center****for the Arts***
**Cyclorama**
January 23 through***January 29***
*presented****in partnership with the**
**Boston Center for the Arts ****as part of the**
**Cyclorama Residency Series***
*/"Part carnival, part protest, all pageant,
Bread and Puppet productions
express political outrage and satire ...
//Mr. Schumann shows that he remains
urgently invested in the politics of the age."
/[New York Times, review of
/Attica/ and /Man of Flesh and Cardboard,/
Dec. 12, 2011]
(Boston, MA 02116) **Bread and Puppet Theater
****presents*******/Attica/**//*and*/Man of Flesh/*/*and Cardboard*/**,
along with****//***/Man = Carrot Circus****/***(family-friendly):
performances presented in partnership with the ****Boston Center for the
Arts******as part of the Cyclorama Residency Series. Performances, as
well as an Art Exhibit and Cheap Art Sale, run the week of January 23
through January 29. All held in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for
the Arts (BCA), 539 Tremont St., South End, Boston [conveniently located
near the MBTA Orange Line & bus connections]. Wheelchair accessible.
Tickets for the performances available for purchase [cash or check only]
in the Cyclorama one hour before each performance. For advance tickets,
log onto www.breadandpuppet.org <http://www.breadandpuppet.org/> or call
866-811-4111 (toll free). For further information regarding the week's
events, call the BCA's Bread and Puppet Theater information line at
617-800-9539 or visit www.bcaonline.org <http://www.bcaonline.org/>.
The award-winning *Bread and Puppet Theater*, featuring Artistic
Director **Peter Schumann** and his troupe of Vermont puppeteers,
returns for a sixth year to the BCA's Cyclorama bringing their signature
powerful imagery, masked characters, and giant papier-mâché puppets.
This year, their residency includes the evening program,
*/Attica/***//****and ***/Man of Flesh and Cardboard****/***(**January
26-29, recommended for ages 12 & older), the matinee */Man = Carrot
Circus****/***(January 28-29, for **children of all ages), along with
*/Upriser Calisthenics/*, a week-long political art installation
(running January 23-29, with an art opening on January 23), and the sale
of Bread and Puppet's legendary *Cheap Art*.
Although all Bread and Puppet events have a seriousness of purpose --- a
few laughs are always thrown in!
/"... //surprisingly warm and lively,
despite the grim subject matter ...
It's hard not to be charmed by
[Schumann's] twinned passions
for puppetry and lefty politics,
still vibrant after all these years/./"
/[Village Voice, review of
/Attica/ and /Man of Flesh and Cardboard,/
Dec. 7, 2011]
_Detailed listings information_:
_Evening Performances_ [recommended for ages 12 & older]:
*Bread and Puppet Theater: /Attica///*and*/Man of Flesh and Cardboard
/***Jan. 26**-Jan. 29, Thurs.-Sun., 7:00 pm
$12 general admission [$10 students, seniors, & groups of 10 or more]
_Description_:
The evening's prologue /Attica/ marks the 40th anniversary of the prison
riots at the Attica Correctional Facility in New York State. /Attica
/was created in 1971 in direct response to the prison uprising, and was
first performed in Bread and Puppet's Coney Island theater. The second
part of the program is /Man of Flesh and Cardboard/, the story of PFC
Bradley Manning who is charged with supplying restricted material to
WikiLeaks. Bread and Puppet confronts the irony of a soldier who faces
conviction of a war crime for bringing war crimes to the light of day.
This piece will be performed by director Peter Schumann and the Bread
and Puppet resident company, along with a large number of local
volunteer puppeteers and musicians. After each performance, the audience
is invited to join an informal talk-back with the artists, to eat the
company's home-made sourdough rye bread spread with garlic-laden aioli,
to view the art exhibit, and to peruse the Cheap Art, posters and
banners for sale.
Evening performance segments taken by DeeDee Halleck:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQ71VDwU6w&feature=youtu.be
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHQ71VDwU6w&feature=youtu.be> (/Attica/),
www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDQ8u7tW1DY&feature=youtu.be
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDQ8u7tW1DY&feature=youtu.be> (/Man of
Flesh and Cardboard/).
_Family-Friendly Matinees_:
*Bread and Puppet Theater: /Man = Carrot Circus/*/
/Jan. 28 & Jan. 29, Sat. & Sun., 2:00 pm
$12 general admission [$6 students, seniors, and pre-school children (2
& under free)]
_Description_:
The family-friendly /Man = Carrot Circus /is based on the revelation
that an upright man rooted in dirt was created in the image of the
upright carrot rooted in dirt. The production is recommended for
audiences ages 1 to 101. Performed by Peter Schumann and the Bread &
Puppet Company, along with a large number of local volunteer puppeteers
and musicians. Take note that some of the circus acts are politically
puzzling to adults, but accompanying kids can usually explain them.
After each performance, the audience is welcome to examine all the masks
and puppets and to peruse the art exhibit and Cheap Art, which will be
for sale.
Circus performance segment taken by DeeDee Halleck:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ISHcfeLVA&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_ISHcfeLVA&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1>
(opening sequence).]
_Visual Art Exhibit_:
*Bread and Puppet Theater: /Upriser Calisthenics/*//visual art
installation created by *Peter Schumann*
Jan. 23-Jan. 29, Mon.-Sun.
Free and open to all.
_Description_: Bread and Puppet Theater Artistic Director Peter
Schumann's most recent visual art exploration, a collection of large
posters with offbeat slogans which speak to matters that concern us all.
_Exhibit details_:
---Mon., Jan. 23, 6:00-9:00 pm: opening reception, with refreshments, an
art talk given by Schumann, short skits performed by the touring
company, and live music performed by the touring company and members of
the *Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band*.
---Tues.-Fri., Jan. 24-27: regular Cyclorama hours: 9:00 am-5:00 pm
[Thursday & Friday hours extended up to and after the evening performance].
---Sat. & Sun., Jan. 28 & 29: one hour before and after each matinee and
evening performance.
For this residency at the Cyclorama, the Bread and Puppet touring
company includes Schumann, along with *Maura Gahan*, *Greg Corbino*,
*Katherine Nook*, *Susie Perkins*, among others. Both the evening and
matinee performances will be performed by the company and a large number
of local volunteers and musicians, including the popular
Somerville-based **Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass
Band****(www.slsaps.org <http://www.slsaps.org/>), which serves as the
house band for Bread & Puppet's Boston performances and is also the host
band for the annual HONK! Festival (www.honkfest.org
<http://www.honkfest.org/>) held in Davis Square.**
All the visuals are created by Schumann, including sculpting and
painting of all the major masks and puppets, with input from the
company. After each evening performance there will be an opportunity to
savor Schumann's famous sourdough rye bread, smeared with garlic aioli;
and there will also be many opportunities during the week to purchase
the theater's legendary "cheap art."
Bread and Puppet Theater is an internationally recognized company that
champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art that
is filled with music, dance and slapstick. Its performances are
political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of paper maché and
cardboard, a brass band for accompaniment, and anti-elitist dance. Most
are morality plays --- about how people act toward each other --- whose
prototype is "Everyman". There are puppets of all kinds and sizes,
masks, paintings, buildings and landscapes that seemingly breathe with
Schumann's distinctive visual style of dance, expressionism, dark humor
and low-culture simplicity.
_A SHORT HISTORY OF BREAD AND PUPPET THEATER
_*Bread and Puppet Theater* is one of the oldest, nonprofit,
self-supporting theatrical companies in this country. It was founded in
1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City's Lower East Side. Besides
rod-puppet and hand-puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first
productions were rents, rats, police and other problems of that
neighborhood. More complex theater pieces, in which sculpture, music,
dance and language were equal partners, followed. The puppets grew
bigger and bigger. Annual presentations for Christmas, Easter,
Thanksgiving and Memorial Day often included children and adults from
the community as participants. Many performances were done in the street.
During the Vietnam War, Bread and Puppet staged block-long processions
and pageants involving hundreds of people. The theater was briefly
located in Coney Island, in a building that formerly housed Boston's
hotel and restaurant. The insider's history, "Coney Island: Lost and
Found" by Charles Denson relates, "The theater became a hangout for
curious young people who stopped in to see the avant-garde productions.
A children's workshop on bread and puppet making was held on weekends...
Before each weekend performance, the puppeteers used to 'bally' on the
streets of Coney Island. Oddly dressed performers beating drums marched
down Surf Avenue with giant dancing marionettes, attracting a crowd that
followed them to the theater. Bally was a traditional Coney art form
that hadn't been used since the days of the sideshows in the 1950's, and
no one knew what to make of it."
In 1970 Bread & Puppet moved to Vermont as theater-in-residence at
Goddard College, combining puppetry with gardening and bread baking in a
serious way, learning to live in the countryside and letting itself be
influenced by the experience. In 1974 the Theater moved to a farm in
Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The 140-year-old hay barn
was transformed into a museum for veteran puppets. "Our Domestic
Resurrection Circus," a two-day outdoor festival of puppetry shows, was
presented annually through 1998.
Through invitations by Grace Paley, Bread and Puppet Theater became a
frequent attraction at anti-Vietnam War events in the '60s and '70s. By
the '80s, the puppets had become emblematic of activist pacifism and a
sine qua non of American political theater, as exemplified by the
massive, ascending figures that are burned into the memory of anyone who
marched with or saw the haunting, massive June 12, 1982 Disarmament
Parade in New York City.
For more information on the Bread and Puppet Theater, log onto
www.breadandpuppet.org <http://www.breadandpuppet.org/>.
_ABOUT THE BOSTON CENTER FOR THE ARTS
_The *Boston Center for the Arts* is a not-for-profit performing and
visual arts campus that supports working artists to create, perform and
exhibit new works, develops new audiences, and connects the arts to
community. Visit www.bcaonline.org <http://www.bcaonline.org/> for more
information.
###END###
--submitted by marycurtinproductions [on behalf of Bread and Puppet Theater]
c/o Mary Curtin
PO Box 290703, Charlestown, MA 02129
617-241-9664, 617-470-5867 (cell), marycurtin at comcast.net
<mailto:marycurtin at comcast.net>
"dedicated to staging insightful entertainment, particularly in
non-traditional venues"
www.marycurtinproductions.com <http://www.marycurtinproductions.com>
www.facebook.com/marycurtin <http://www.facebook.com/marycurtin>
http://twitter.com/marycurtin
www.myspace.com/marycurtin <http://www.myspace.com/marycurtin>
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