Marc Estrin
REHEARSING WITH GODS: PHOTOGRAPHS AND ESSAYS ON THE BREAD & PUPPET THEATER
(with Ronald T. Simon, photographer) (2004)
Working with the Bread & Puppet Theater since 1970 has been the longest and deepest political/artistic association of my life. Its director, Peter Schumann, is surely one of the greats of art, and in my view, political, history. Painter, sculptor, puppeteer, musician, dancer, stilt-walker, speaker of hybrid language, thinker of oddball thoughts, a man of huge heart and penetrating morality, his work has profoundly influenced the thousands of puppeteers he has worked with all over the world, and the hundreds of thousands who have seen that work.
I thought it a wonderful tribute to Peter’s impact when the first police action at the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia was to “bust the puppets” — to invade the collective workshop and confiscate and destroy the potential puppets. Poles, dontcha know, are “weapons“, and paint-thinner the stuff of Molotov cocktails.
In Rehearsing With Gods, I’ve tried to record some of my thoughts and experiences over 35 years, using the Bread & Puppet-y archetypes of Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread, and Hope. Ron Simon did the wonderful photographs for this, our parallel meditation.