Bread & Puppet Theater's WHATFORWARD CIRCUS Coming to Cambridge Common

Bread & Puppet Theater: Whatforward Circus. Sunday, September 4, 3:00 pm. Held outdoors on the Cambridge Common, near the intersection of Mass. Ave. and Waterhouse St. [Rain venue: First Church in Cambridge, 11 Garden St.] Free performance (pass-the-hat donations); all ages welcome. For further details, call the Bread & Puppet Theater's Boston-area hotline 617-286-6694 or visit www.breadandpuppet.org.

The award-winning Vermont-based Bread & Puppet Theater takes its annual Labor Day weekend "little big tour" down from Vermont to the Boston area, this year bringing their new Whatforward Circus to the Cambridge Common, to be presented outdoors on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.

The Whatforward Circus, in true Bread & Puppet slapstick fashion, follows the escapades of a group of stone age technology puppeteers, brass players, and percussionists, as they, according to director Peter Schumann: "check out the prominent forward moving passions and politics of our capitalist culture, and make real and unreal against-the-grain proposals to identify and fight the anonymous monster, the big fat Wrong."

As always with Bread & Puppet circus events, if some of the circus acts are politically puzzling to adults, accompanying kids can usually explain them. Sourdough rye bread will be served after the show, along with the sale of the theater's Cheap Art. The audience is also welcome to stick around and check out all the masks and puppets.

Special thanks to the Cambridge Arts Council, the Harvard Square Business Association, and the First Church in Cambridge for assisting in Bread & Puppet's return to the Cambridge Common, which has been under renovation for the past few years. The Whatforward Circus on the Common is also funded in part by the Cambridge Arts Council.

[Bread & Puppet will also be performing their Whatforward Circus on Monday September 5th, at the Bread & Roses Heritage Festival in Lawrence, MA. (www.breadandrosesheritage.org)]

Bread & Puppet Theater is an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick. Its shows are political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of paper maché and cardboard. Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City's Lower East Side, the theater has been based in the North East Kingdom of Vermont since the early 1970s. For more, visit www.breadandpuppet.org.

?Photo by Mark Dannenhauer

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