PORTLAND — Bread and Puppet Theater will present four performances of “Of The End of the World Never Minding Show” at Mayo Street Arts on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, April 24-26.
Bread and Puppet Theater embarks on their spring tour with an urgently-needed new puppet show featuring our upside-down situation, a revolt orchestra, screaming choirs and a reckoning with the catastrophe of logic.
“Of The End of the World Never Minding Show,” director Peter Schumann tells us that, “The sitting mind realises the predicament of the rats, assigned to spread the plague which opens the gates of darkness as fears chase the populations across the face of the earth. Humanity’s humdrum is now outrageous and no longer composed of beloved details. The rats in charge of spreading the plague are ordered to repurpose human freedom and democracy into guns, bombs, and starvation. Our own futuristic Not-Yet is impatient and unready. We must take our cardboard provocations into the revolting streets of life, with help from our paper-maché divinities, to succeed and succeed.”
The Bread and Puppet Theater 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 the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. 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.
In 1974 Bread and Puppet 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.
The company makes its income from touring new and old productions both on the American continent and abroad, and from sales of Bread and Puppet Press’ posters and publications. The traveling puppet shows range from tightly composed theater pieces presented by members of the company to extensive outdoor pageants which require the participation of many volunteers.
Today, Bread and Puppet continues to be one of the oldest, nonprofit, political theatre companies in the country.
Mayo Street Arts is a welcoming community arts center in the heart of Portland’s Kennedy Park neighborhood. The organization’s building serves as a performance venue, gallery, and gathering space, and offers affordable studios and rehearsal space for artists. Mayo Street Arts’ programming embraces variety, with a particular focus on puppetry and folk music and dance.
Tickets to see Bread and Puppet Theater at Mayo Street Arts on Friday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 25 at 3:30 and 7:30 p.m. and Sunday, April 26 at 3:30 p.m. are available for $25 in advance and $28 at the door. Pay-what-you-can options are available to support accessibility. Visit www.mayostreetarts.org for ticket links and more information.
