Bread & Puppet Theater Set for 11-Day Residency at MassArt

Massachusetts College of Art and Design (MassArt) will host Bread & Puppet Theater, featuring Founder and Artistic Director Peter Schumann, for an 11-day Artist-in-Residency from February 11-21. MassArt students and community partners will collaborate with the troupe throughout the residency; the public is also invited to participate as volunteer puppeteers and attend the performances.

The Bread & Puppet residency at MassArt was established through Academic Affairs, and is co-organized by the Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP) and the Studio for Interrelated Media (SIM) academic department with the intention of offering students and community members alike the opportunity to participate in the interdisciplinary residency program in a meaningful way. The residency offers many entry points for artists, designers, and educators to collaborate with the troupe and gain valuable experience. Students and volunteers will attend performances, rehearse and perform with the troupe, assist with production, and document the shows. Through these opportunities, participants will learn what it means to be an activist artist, how to respond to real life issues through the performative process, and how to create work collaboratively with other artists.

MassArt students will participate in the residency as independent study with the Studio for Interrelated Media, or through related class offerings such as playwriting through the Liberal Arts department, puppet-making through Fine Arts 3D, or live drawing sessions during the rehearsals.

The Center for Art and Community Partnerships is partnering with several community-based organizations to introduce new audiences to Bread & Puppet. Sociedad Latina is a primary community partner for the residency and plans to engage its members through many art forms such as instrumental accompaniment during performances, video documentation of the shows, as well as rehearsals and performances with the troupe.

Get Involved

The residency opens with a Fiddle Sermon on February 11, delivered by Peter Schumann, followed by a question and answer session with the Bread & Puppet company, a parade through MassArt's Design and Media Center, and a reception in Peter Schumann's exhibit in the Tower Lobby. The residency will continue with two different kinds of performances that feature Bread & Puppet's signature powerful imagery, masked characters, and giant papier-mâché puppets, The Overtakelessness Circus (February 13-14) and The Seditious Conspiracy Theater Presents: A Monument to the Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera (February 17-21).

Additionally, Peter Schumann's political art installation titled North East Kingdom Weapons and Tools for Decapitalization will be on view (February 12-21). Following each performance, Schumann's homemade sourdough rye bread (spread with garlic-laden aioli), freshly baked in a temporary outdoor brick oven in the MassArt courtyard, will be offered to visitors.

Calendar of events:

Fiddle Sermon
Thursday, February 11, 5:30-7pm
Pozen Center
Q&A, parade, and reception to follow

The Overtakelessness Circus
Saturday and Sunday, February 13-14, 3pm
Tower Auditorium
Recommended for all ages

The Seditious Conspiracy Theater Presents: A Monument to the Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera
Wednesday-Saturday, February 17-20, 7:30pm
Sunday, February 21, 3pm
Tower Auditorium
Recommended for ages 10 and up

North East Kingdom Weapons and Tools for Decapitalization
Political Art Installation
On view February 12-21
Tower Building Lobby

All events are free admission; to attend a performance as a spectator, RSVP at www.massart.edu/breadandpuppet. To volunteer as a performer with the troupe, email breadpuppetlinda@gmail.com. For more information about the Bread & Puppet Artist-in-Residency at MassArt, visit www.massart.edu/breadandpuppet.

Now in its 52nd year, the Bread & Puppet Theater is one of the oldest and most unique self-sustaining nonprofit theater companies in the United States. The theater champions a visually rich slapstick style of street theater that is filled with huge puppets made of papier-mâché and cardboard, combined with masked characters, improvisational dance movement, political commentary, and a lively brass band. The New York Times describes the company's performances as "a spectacle for the heart and soul."

Bread & Puppet is based on a farm in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. The theater was founded in 1963 on the Lower East Side of New York City by Peter Schumann, a German born artist-dancer, and for the next decade his giant puppets figured prominently in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations in New York, Washington, and other cities in the US and abroad. Indoor performances were both simple and more complex, ranging from quiet, intense masked shows ("Fire", "Man Says Good-Bye") with 4-6 players, to huge, lengthy spectacles ("Cry of the People for Meat").

In 1970, an invitation from Vermont's Goddard College to be theater-in-residence facilitated a longed-for change to country life. The theater's renowned "Our Domestic Resurrection Circus," a two-day outdoor festival of music, art, puppetry and pageantry, began back then at Goddard, and ran almost every summer -first at Goddard from 1970-1973, then continuing up through 1998 at the theater's current home in Glover, VT-drawing crowds of tens of thousands. Since then, a smaller (but with giant puppets intact), more dispersed version continues on Sundays in July and August; the company continues touring and workshopping the rest of the year in New England and around the globe; and Schumann continues as director and artist-and bread baker-with a vengeance! For more information on the theater, visit www.breadandpuppet.org.

Massachusetts College of Art and Design is one of the top colleges of its kind in the United States. Founded in 1873, MassArt has a legacy of leadership as the only independent public college of art and design in the country and the nation's first art school to grant a degree. The College offers a comprehensive range of baccalaureate and graduate degrees in art and design, all taught by world-class faculty, along with continuing education and youth programs designed to encourage individual creativity. Whether at home in Boston or on the other side of the globe, the artists and designers of MassArt are dedicated to making a difference in their communities and around the world. MassArt recently received the prestigious 2015 Community Engagement Classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching for its dedication to community engagement through public programming and curricular opportunities. For more information, visit www.massart.edu. Follow MassArt on social media: Twitter @massart, Instagram @massartboston, Facebook.com/massartboston, and LinkedIn.

About Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP) - CACP cultivates innovative, sustainable relationships with the broader community to explore and expand the relevance of art in public life. CACP matches MassArt faculty, students, staff, and alumni who want to complete community-based projects with neighborhood organizations, schools, and institutions to create mutually beneficial, sustainable partnerships in the visual arts and design that impact over 6,000 people each year. The Center uses art as a catalyzing force for citizens to act creatively together. Click here to learn more about how we impact our community. For more information, please visit www.massart.edu/CACP

The Studio for Interrelated Media, founded in 1969, is the first undergraduate interdisciplinary fine arts program in the country. SIM is intended for students interested in a curriculum that supports idea-centered, interdisciplinary, and non-media speci?c artistic practice, driven by collaboration and self-governance. SIM majors incorporate sound, light, motion, digital media, live performance, the internet, social practice, interactive installation, print and spoken word, event production, and curatorial practice. SIM has remained at the cutting edge of artistic experimentation for over 40 years. For more information, visit sim.massart.edu.

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