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Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Part VIII 1/2/2004 8:17:12 AM
Dance of the Representatives.
Peter adds a new scene called "The Dance of the Representatives" to the Oratorio during the final rehearsal just hours before the opening night of the Cambridge run. The idea seems to have come to him so suddenly that it never gets mentioned in the program. While I was not one of the representatives when they introduce themselves at the beginning of the "Federal Re-Adjustment of Paradise Program" it does not matter that I have been selected for this scene, as I spend my time behind one of the large crudely painted corrugated cardboard effigies.
The one time prior that I had seen Bread & Puppet, it was a production of "Dirt Cheap Opera" I had noted that these large cardboard characters were so iconic that it did not matter which puppeteer played a given role at a given moment. The voices could be different, shifting from baritone to alto, from masculine to feminine, but their power as icons was so salient that I had to make an additional effort to notice which of the four puppeteers in that production was behind a given puppet.
This is the case with the Dance of the Representatives. It is a simple dance with simple choreography, made easy by the fact that since one maintains the frontality of the puppet to the audience, any movement that accomplishes the end result is acceptable and thus it is an equalizer between those with great technique and those without. I quickly learn Peter's directions during the rehearsal and at one instance he points me out as being the example for others to follow.
Just after we take our bows for the Manifesto for the Fast World Motet, one group of puppeteers tear down the set for the Immigration and De-Naturalization Service and nine of us slip behind the Representative puppets which are propped up against the back curtain.
Once the stage is cleared, Peter gives us our cues. In each hand he holds one of two long Polish cavalry bugles. At the first blares, we shuffle to stage right and congregate. He takes a few steps, points the brass towards us and blasts again, we lean the puppets to our left at about a forty five degree angle. Different people use different solutions to this problem. Some just tilt the cardboard, others crouch down while rotating the puppet. My solution on most nights is to keep the puppet parallel to my torso, place my feet in a wide second position and then do what we call in mime technique a contrary Eiffel Tower.
Peter lets loose more horn blasts and we bring the representatives back to vertical and start to scurry about the stage while maintaining the frontality of the representatives. I keep my movements either on a strict left-right or upstage-downstage axis, only changing one or the other. There are sometimes collisions but never one that ruins the act. When I mention at the first cast party that I had bumped into Peter that night, he grins and winks as he says that he'll beat me up the next day, but I never get worse than a friendly thump on the back.
Then with a more sustained blast of the bugles, Peter lulls the Representatives to sleep, we sit on the stage floor and lay the representatives back over ourselves. Those of us who are downstage are visible behind our puppets from the extreme left and right balcony seats. I raise my puppet up and down from my shoulder and elbow joints so to give the illusion of breathing in a slumber.
Peter blows through the horns without playing a note. The brass amplifies his exhalation and we rise to our feet, tilting the representatives back and forth as if we are papers or leaves fluttering in the wind as we retreat upstage. The dance has ended and we step out from behind our puppets and exit. My roommates observe that on the night that they attended that I had been behind the representative of "Truth."
