Feelings in the Presence of the Sight and Sound of the Bread and Puppet Theater

ADMIRATION

Oh! Ah! The gorgeousness   the solemn size   the humorous disparities

HAPPINESS

Sheer happiness   just plain happiness

RESTFULNESS

In some of the long slow pieces often of holy intention—rest—the spirit—also the body rests inside the event the work-with room and permission for absence. The gathering of knowledge at the “five senses’ entry to the soul”—so with rest comes thought—time—room for thinking during the work not only after it.

ARTISTIC INSPIRATION

Why not speak the truth directly? Just speak out! Speak to! Why not?

POLITICAL INSPIRATION

Why not speak the truth directly? Just speak out! Speak up! Speak to! Why not?

CORROBORATION

Yes! That’s just what’s happening.

ENVY

Because the work is so useful the courage of its usefulness in a long period when usefulness was mocked   Envy as an artist for the beauty and usefulness of the huge puppet figures like legends out of history   the gray women of suffering the ridiculous evil Uncle Fatso   the lovely oxen turning round and round in the dance of silent beasts   the white deer on the hill under the red ball of the sun   the high birds bravely carried that have flown before and after us on our demonstrations and have waited fluttering in the wind outside the jails of New York Vermont Washington.

To have been useful As an Artist to the important movements of our times   to have spoken out as artists for the poor, the oppressed and humiliated in Europe Africa and at home and been heard.

AND FINALLY LOVE AND GRATITUDE

for Peter Schuman and Elka Schuman and that solid core of puppeteers—also for those who came, worked with Peter for a couple of years, and then went off to Maine California France Italy Germany Ninth Street New York Brooklyn   Gratitude for their gifts to us of labor and beauty from the earliest unknown days on Delancey Street when we were sometimes fewer than they—to these wonderful summer circus days in Vermont where we, their comrades and friends, meet one another in the thousands   AND GRATITUDE also for the opportunity generously given to be one of them an ox   a deer   a stilt walker   a horse   a maintenance man   a washerwoman.

And thanks Peter for the tens of thousands of Loaves of Bread and the music

(1981)