We are a rag-tag collective of Ypsilanti residents who are bringing the Bread and Puppet Theater to town for their 2025 tour. But we need your help! We are looking to raise $1,000 to pay for our venue and $5,000 to pay the performers. We expect donations during the show to only cover $1,000-$2,000 of expenses, so we are organizing bake sales and the like in the mean time.

About the show:

Ladles and Jellyspoons! The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is back with Anti-Empire Art that acknowledges our beloved Mother Dirt, who makes us and unmakes us, and who presents urgently needed domestic resurrection services for the victims of this latest genocide. We are joined by Palestinian cranes on their way to Washington to replace the excrement in the White House with organic bird droppings, green frogs who teach the art of hopping over seemingly insurmountable problems, and gaggles of kindergarten butterflies who frolic to their hearts’ desire. With texts from 14th-century medieval mystery plays, join us for a serious and silly circus: Our Domestic Resurrection Revolution In Progress!

After each 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.

About Bread & Puppet:

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 theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners. The puppets grew bigger and bigger. Annual presentations for Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving and Memorial Day often included children and adults from the community as participants. Many performances were done in the street. During the Vietnam War, Bread and puppet staged block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people.

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.

Today, Bread and Puppet continues to be one of the oldest, nonprofit, political theater companies in the country.

Bring Bread and Puppet Theater to Ypsi!