About Bread and Puppet:

The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. In 1974 Bread and Puppet moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The 140-year old hay barn was transformed into a museum for veteran puppets. Our Domestic Resurrection Circus, a two day outdoor festival of puppetry shows, was presented annually through 1998. The company makes its income from touring new and old productions both on the American continent and abroad, and from sales of Bread and Puppet Press’ posters and publications. The traveling puppet shows range from tightly composed theater pieces presented by members of the company, to extensive outdoor pageants which require the participation of many volunteers. Bread and Puppet is one of the oldest, nonprofit, political theatre companies in the country.

About the show:

This Fall, The Upside Down World Circus will tour cities and towns from Glover to New York to Minneapolis and more! Get ready for a show featuring puppets big and small, acts serious and silly, and performances slapstick and sublime. Stilt dancers, paper maché beasts, and a riotous brass band make a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.

“Is it or is it not?

Am I asleep or am I awake?

Am I a cockroach or am I a me?

Possibilitarians! We must demonstrate humanity’s upside-down situation in the face of the government’s depraved falsehoods. Luxury silence and despair must be replaced by revolt orchestras that radically oppose the radically wrong system.

It is time to unforget the revolution-in-progress and aim for the evermore on the universe’s shore.”

After the show Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread & Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press – will be for sale.

This FestivALL Field Trip is part of our organization's "Outside the Lines" initiative — bringing unique arts experiences to Charleston residents outside our usual festival timeline.

FestivALL Field Trip: Bread and Puppet

Join FestivALL for an all-inclusive field trip to see the legendary puppet troupe Bread and Puppet!