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Another Two Weeks with Bread & Puppet Theater: Part IV 1/3/2005 8:27:53 AM
Fire Cantastoria
"World on Fire" opens with a cantastoria entitled "Fire." A cantastoria is a picture show, in which images are presented on large sheets that are often flipped over like so many pages of a gigantic comic book. Lilly is the narrator and we are her chorus. I had read an essay by George Dennison about a play called "Fire" that Bread & Puppet performed during the 1960s. I do not know if these two "Fires" are the same or not.
[Dennison’s essay appears both in his book "An Existing Better World: Notes on the Bread and Puppet Theater" and also in Arthur Sainer's "The New Radical Theatre Notebook."]
Lilly tells of three fires, one that keeps us warm, one that cooks our meals, and one that provides light in our desperate moments, then of bringing these fires to our neighbors in their own times of need. We in the chorus clap and repeat words and phrases: “cold”, “hungry”, “desparate”, and “death comes.” Death comes to turs the life giving and hope giving fires into means of making war: Tanks, airplanes, and bombs. We let out a mourning cry as he kills our neighbors, and when we ask in whose name and with what money Death does makes war on our neighbors. At that point the Red Clowns arrive to crashes of cymbals and poundings of bass drums.
The Red Clowns are a particularly fascinating element to me. The are clowns of the buffoon variety, bringers of chaos, the clowns of nightmare, cackling, crashing and banging, clad in red and white. Played by Jesse, Lydia, Rose, Ben, Jabari, and Justin of the regular company, their costumes are individuated: Justin in baggy trousers and big shoes with a red hood and droopy nose; Rose in a white lace dress and red cloth pigtails; Jesse in red tutu and gigim, rarely failing to crash her cymbals in my face ever performance; Lydia with a pillow for a belly, black goggles and accordion; Ben, is probably the most grotesque of the clowns: already the tallest member of the troupe, his size is exagerated more by an incredibly tall candy cane painted dunce cap and a nose that is almost as long, and like the Neapolitan commedia dell’arte character, Pulcinella, he is a hunchback. As much as I like my role in the dumb show, I often find myself wishing I could be a red clown as well.
The Red Clowns are led by The Fire Chief, a masked figure in firefighter's gear played by Michael. They announce the current wartime emergency and declare the chorus members "asymmetric prisoners of war." Those clad in white are forced to put on prison stripes while those of us in red resist, huddling and attempting different strategies, including using Isaac as a battering ram against the Fire Chief's pillow of a belly. The Fire Chief pushes us into the puppet theater and closes the curtains.
