GOOD FRIDAYS IN GLOVER

Jul 20, 2007

The Barre-Montpelier Times Argus

Marc Estrin - Arts Correspondent

It's been eight years since the Bread & Puppet Theater ended "Our Domestic Resurrection Circus", its weekend of shows large and small, drawing tens of thousands of people to tiny Glover, Vermont. The public seems to finally understand that Bread & Puppet is not "over," and hundreds now attend the free Sunday afternoon performances of circus and pageant in July and August. 

What many don't yet seem to know is that there are also Friday night offerings at 8PM in the "new building", shorter shows that represent a distinct aspect of Peter Schumann's work, not represented on Sundays. Audiences for these Friday night, 8 PM shows are small: they shouldn't be.

The evening's experience begins on the drive to Glover -- out of city and town into the "Northeast Kingdom", the most rural section of Vermont, a world of few humans, dominated by forests and ponds, hills and small mountains. By the time one has arrived at the B&P farm, one is calmed, opened, ready for anything.

And anything it is, or more like everything, since "the new building", even empty, contains the world. Every board of its outside walls is painted with long, mysterious, black-on-wood figures, Giacometti-like, Schumann's version of the saints adorning Chartres. The interior is matched (I am serious) only by that of the Sistine Chapel: Again, every square inch is covered by painted, bas-relief panels of angels and devils and good and bad gods, scenes of glory and devastation, the human world and the cosmos. One should come early to just wander the walls and stare at the ceiling in awe. 

There is often a prelude outdoors, usually a "cantistoria" in which a performer narrates a series of paintings on large flip-charts, accompanied by chorus. And then, onto the bleachers for the main event.

The show is short, less than an hour, active, passionate, and serious. These Friday night shows are the most directly political of Schumann's summer offerings. While the Sunday circuses are topical, often slapstick, and the pageants which follow are grand and mysterious, the Friday night indoor shows are devastatingly pointed. Last year's was an agonized cry about the destruction of Lebanon. This summer's shudders and shouts its agonized impatience for "the sweeping away of this miserable government."

Fear not. Though Schumann's shows are political, they are never boring or predictable agit-prop. The imagery is wild and strange, metaphorical, suggestive of larger, invisible forces. 

In the first of "Six World-Can't-Wait Dances", for instance, "The Our-Government-On-The-Basis-Of-Outrageous-Lies-Wages-A-Murderous-And-Illegitimate-War Dance" the bleachered spectators stare at three mysterious boxes set up on the dirt floor in front of them. They are startled from their speculations by a cacophonous, blast from a wind, brass and percussion army behind them. Three masked characters enter, and begin to play these boxes each in their turn. Stage left is an instrument on which, when crank is turned by a commedia-masked dancer, a woman's shoe rises and falls, banging its heel against its ground. Center stage is a series of small boxes. When a crank is turned by a jacketed ape, the lids open and clack shut serially, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack. Stage right is a box cranked by an ominous beaked figure. Its sound is small -- the sound of friction. As it grinds, a glove's index-finger extends upwards, and collapses. All this, and the show hasn't really even begun.

As with many Schumann offerings one can wonder about meanings large and small: the war, the cranking of machines, the falling of women's shoes, boxes opening and shutting, fingers pointing to the sky. Best not to get lost in these levels of speculation, though the images stick for later pondering.

Thirty puppeteers enter in street clothing and fall to the ground. No acting, just a simple fall to the ground. They lie there as various strange masked and costumed figures walk among the bodies, prodding them, mourning, or simply observing. Though minimally active, for me the most provocative was what I saw as a version of "American Gothic", a bulbous-headed, pot-bellied man, standing arm-in-arm with his strange-looking, house-dressed wife.

There is no room to describe all the dances in adequate detail. Remembering that the accompanying imagery is hallucinatory and metaphorical, a few titles will have to suffice to indicate what drives this show: "The Government-Is-Openly-Torturing-People-And-Justifying-It Dance"; The That-Which-You-Will-Not-Resist-You-Will-Be-Forced-To-Accept Dance"; "The Silence-Is-Not-Acceptable-In-The-Face-Of-this-More-And-More-Fascist-Democracy Dance". 

All is finally swept away, and one drives home at night, contemplating the darkness, unable to speak. 

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For a photo of one of the puppets, see the link here.