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Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Part IX 1/2/2004 8:18:32 AM
The Battle of Good & Evil.
At the end of the Dance of the Representatives we exit stage right and change into our alien costumes in the back stairwell. Already the other performers have exited to the left and costumed themselves as barbarians with furs, helms, capes, spears, clubs and swords. This is the prelude to the climatic Battle of Good and Evil. However, it is unclear as to who is good and who is evil. The leader of the barbarians, quoting an ancient Mesopotomian text, boasts of conquests and cruelty while the barbarian soldiers strike poses. Then they begin to sing "Tantum Ergo Sacramentum" the medieval Franciscan hymn whose melody confounds me throughout the production.
Lydia comes down the steps in the backstage area dressed as our alien queen, with a sword in one hand. Our costumes are made of cardboard wrapped in aluminum foil, and duct tape, or spray painted silver. In many instances our helmets are made from the same forms as the barbarian headpieces but theirs take on earth tones or animal skin like textures-- others are unique to a given force, like some strange cubist helms that are clearly alien. My costume shifts over the course of the production as people are often stashing elements of their costumes in various locations an hour before show time. I start with a large boxy suit of armor but end the productions with a more flexible silvery approximation of banded armor that extends down to protect my pelvis. I wear various head pieces ranging from oversized goggles to a helmet reminiscent of the 1950s film serial hero, Commando Cody or the more recent comic book hero "The Rocketeer" to something that looks like it was designed by Picasso during one of his forays into sculpture. For weaponry, I find myself armed on various nights with a plastic ray gun that came from Isaac's toy collection, to silver three fingered gloves, to a strange assemblage of pipes and an ice cream scoop that I call the "Hyper Spatial Ice Cream Scoop of Death."
Most nights, I am one of the first aliens to emerge following Lydia in slow motion as she ascends the steps on stage right with her sword pointed horizontally and thus I am placed at the front line in our stand off with the barbarians. I try my best to focus on one of the other bass singers, since the bass line to the song is so different than the melody. The song breaks and the alien queen also boasts of her conquests and accomplishments on the battlefield. Finally at her last boast, the two armies charge one another in slow motion, our weapons stabbing and striking, our fists swinging and pummeling, our legs kicking and stomping. As the song progresses we start to fall to the ground, dead. I tend to be one of the last to die, throwing my leg in air as I go down or try to make one last strike at the enemy before I collapse. The two monarchs continue their boasting even as the brights flood the stage and our eyes, making visible the carnage of all the twisted corpses and bent armor.
There is a neighing in the background and Strawberry returns to the stage in her charioteer's costume. We rise from the dead and declare the Manifesto of the Possibilitarians.
