Bread and Puppet Theater Exhibition

Salem State’s Winfisky Gallery hosts “Bread and Puppet Theater: Art and Activism in Five Acts”,  October 24 – November 18.

This exhibition, curated by Clare Dolan, will present a history of Bread and Puppet Theater's projects from the 1960's to the present. It will feature the various visual forms the collective has created including drawings, paintings and sculptures. The exhibition extends into the atrium of the Frederick E. Berry Library.

Dolan will present an artist’s talk at 12:30 pm on Monday, October 24 in the MLK Room, Ellison Campus Center. This will be followed by an opening reception at 1:30 pm. Additional gallery discussions will take place on November 2 and 9 from 12:30-1:30 pm. The Winfisky Gallery is open Monday - Friday, 10 am - 4 pm. 

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 pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people.

In 1974, Peter Schumann and his wife Elka, moved Bread and Puppet to a farm in Glover, Vermont where the company resides to this day. As Bread and Puppet Theater approaches 60 years young, Schumann’s visionary melding of art, activism, puppetry, street theater and sourdough bread remains a North star for all who follow in this work.

This exhibition is made possible through the support of Bernard and Sophia Gordon and the Gordon Foundation.