As part of its week-long residency at the University of Connecticut, Vermont’s internationally acclaimed Bread and Puppet Theater will present a lunchtime program of outdoor street theater performances on Wednesday, April 20 at 12 noon on UConn’s Fairfield Way, somewhere between the UConn Student Center and the Homer Babbidge Library. This performance is in conjunction with Bread and Puppet’s outdoor performances of Aeschylus’s The Persians on Saturday and Sunday, April 23-24 at 4 p.m.
Bread and Puppet Theater, founded in 1963 by sculptor and choreographer Peter Schumann in New York City, has become well known around the world for its combinations of over-life-size puppetry and activism. Based in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, the theater performs street shows, pageants, circuses, tragedies, and operas regularly across the United States and around the world, in all kinds of indoor and outdoor venues. The street shows performed on Fairfield Way will reflect Bread and Puppet’s re-invention of the traditional picture-performance form known as cantastoria, in which a series of colorful paintings are sung and narrated by a chorus of performers and brass musicians. This colorful, celebratory, and thought-provoking performance is suitable for all ages.
For more information about the Bread and Puppet Theater’s production of The Persians at the University of Connecticut, visit https://tinyurl.com/yzcpy2ej or email bimp@uconn.edu. The company will also participate in an in-person and online Ballard Institute Puppet Forum at UConn’s Dramatic Arts Department Mobius Theatre on Thursday, April 21 at 12 noon.
This event is funded in part by the New England States Touring program of the New England Foundation for the Arts, made possible with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts Regional Touring Program and the six New England state arts agencies.
For more information, contact: Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at bimp@uconn.edu or 860.486.8580