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Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Part XVII 1/23/2004 2:12:30 PM
Others are frustrated when Bread & Puppet will not bend to their agendas.
One thing that strikes me is the reaction Bread & Puppet receives from different circles. On one extreme is the reviewer from the Boston Globe who is so invested in conventional ideas of theater that much of the production was likened to the ramblings of a mentally ill homeless person-- this reviewer lacked understanding not only of the traditions of puppet, popular, and countercultural theater, but of twentieth century intellectual history during which time Western Civilization began to engage itself in a massive self critique.
On the other extreme are people from the counterculture who attack Bread & Puppet for not fitting with their ideology.
The first is a local community activist and sometime candidate for city council. On the third night of rehearsal, he shows up and dumps two large vats of vegetable stew made from produce that was about to be discarded by local grocery stores-- normally, this stuff is fed to homeless people for free. It certainly is edible, but only a day away from going bad. We have plenty of fresh food to snack on during our breaks from rehearsal. We don't need this stew and don't know what to do with it.
Several days later, this same activist arrives in the lobby with ten of his friends some twenty minutes after the show has begun demanding to be seated for free. Mary, the producer, has to stand firm and sends him on his way. She is still aggravated by the activists' attempts at a shake down even at the cast party later that evening.
At another point, I bump into a fellow with whom I am friendly and mention that I am performing with Bread & Puppet. He gets angry as he recalls how when he showed up at another Bread & Puppet show, he came with several bags worth of day old bread and pastry that he had recovered from a local bakery. The bakery in question is very good but, he was told that he could not serve it as part of Bread & Puppet. He does not understand that the tradition of Bread & Puppet is to serve the audience bread baked that very day from the sourdough starter that Peter Schumann's grandmother began sometime in 19th century Silesia-- not that which the commercial baker was unable to sell the previous day. There is certainly room enough in the world for both sorts of bread, but this fellow seems to be unwilling to respect the traditions and rituals of Bread & Puppet.
The third critic I encounter is a friend of mine, she is an artist and something of an copyleft/anti-copyright activist. We certainly share a love for appropriation art like Negativland and both take an interest in what happens when first amendment and copyright issues come into the discussion. However, she comes up with an anecdote about a local artist who sells his mass produced work as "cheap art" at various street fairs and festivals and decided to produce his own poster using the text of Bread & Puppet's "Cheap Art Manifesto." Bread & Puppet issued a cease and desist letter. This angers my friend who insists that this artist be allowed to essentially go ahead and make a bootleg version of a broadsheet that the Bread & Puppet Press already publishes. I am familiar with this artist's work: It’s fun, priced inexpensively, and perhaps it is inspired by B&P, but it lacks the social content and style of B&P's work. Understandably, a theater company that has been in existence for 1963, publishes broadsides and books, and has been the subject of many an article and a few books, has a legacy to protect, especially when another makes use of their manifesto for commercial purposes.
However, my friend is such a strict anti-copyright fundamentalist that she views the moral rights of an artist in the same light as the current corporate commodification and control of most of popular culture. Even Negativland stays within the realm of fair use for commentary and satirical purposes
In each there is an unwillingness to accept another’s choices and insistance that of their own correctitude.
