Growing up in Vermont meant summer at Bread & Puppet’s Domestic Resurrection Circus. It was an important part of the formative years of my life, visually, politically, and socially. I was exposed to communal camping, food, working together, art on a scale I hadn’t imagined before, and life life life. We’d camp all weekend, bring jewelery I’d made (under the disturbing moniker of Abruptly Naked Gerbils Who Were Formerly Wearing Hats — ah, my 14 year old self was an odd one) to sell on blankets in the sun, swap for pretty stones & crocheted goodies. We’d ramble into the woods, bathe in the creek, freezing cold mountain water. The Circus ended in 1998, after party kids changed the atmosphere from one of community& art & harmony to something dangerous. But the museum is still in VT, and performances happen all over all summer. John Bell wrote a really fantastic history of the Circus and it’s closing, please read it!
More & larger images here, from the museum in Glover, VT.
OK! So…my first giveaway. I ordered my regular Bread & Puppet calendar, and they sent me some extra prizes. So much goodness. These 2 lovely & heart-bursting prints could be yours, just post a comment & then I choose randomly. Uh, maybe when I have more than…5 comments. That’s how it works, right? It’s nice also if you maybe say some nice things or share some pretty memory. Tit for tat!
The large print is 11 x 17 and the little one is 5 x 7.
laura
1 year ago
oh my god, how beautiful! and exciting!
i might be lacking in the pretty memories department, but one that always stands out to me, maybe because it’s one of my first, was my grandparents’ house, the one they lived in for most of their lives before they moved to an apartment after my grandma had a stroke.
it was sunny and clean and bright. there were stacks of colorful, glossy thick books everywhere that came up to my chin. there was a marc chagall print on the wall, a framed poster of einstein with his tongue sticking out, and a diego rivera print that i thought was menacing and ugly. i didn’t know that it was a famous piece of art until i was in school. i just associated it with their house. there was a huge, moss-green danish modern chair and ottoman. i ate hot rye bread with strawberry jam on it. i think i remember this because it was the anniversary of john lennon’s death and my grandma was talking about it.
my grandpa was playing the violin in the other room and when he’d finished he made ice cream sodas. my mom and i took their huge boat of an volvo to her school friend polly’s house. polly lived alone with a lot of animals; i remember fish, a tree frog, a parrot, some cats…when they were in high school, polly’s father had committed suicide (parked his car on the train tracks) and left his money to polly rather than her mother, which caused this huge rift, and polly moved out on her own and bought a convertible and found a rockstar boyfriend who may have beaten her up.
before bed (at some point during the trip; i don’t know if this was the same day) i looked at a boxful of old photographs with my grandma. there was one of my mom as a teenager in a pencil skirt, standing out in front of their apartment and looking ‘tough’. i saw a picture of my grandpa at age eight or nine. his hair was red.
and…that’s it!
verhext
1 year ago
Yay, that’s so great. I love when people have modern / creative / bohemian grandparents!! You should scan old photos.
laura
1 year ago
you know, i think they would have balked at any of those adjectives…they didn’t really have a scene, they were just who they were. i could definitely think of them that way, and it’s amazing what they did with their lives both having been born in tiny farming communities. i hope i can be half as cool as them when i’m that age.
verhext
1 year ago
Well, I think they’re good adjectives. I didn’t know anyone as a child who had art on their walls or cared about Einstein, I’m from blue collar factory workers! We didn’t even have books in my house, growing up.
Lydia
1 year ago
what an amazing and wonderful experience to have as a child! I just went to horse camp…
verhext
1 year ago
Well, I was definitely a teenager doing what I pleased at this point!! Horse camp sounds lovely.
Erin
1 year ago
That is a great memory! I would love to play dominos with you. I love in Berkeley. I also love your blog and your flickr! I wish I took more pictures.
bulaklak
1 year ago
Another gorgeous and educational post in your gorgeous and educational blog.
I am whirling through my mind for a pretty memory and finding it hard to choose, so I will pick the most recent.
Last weekend I assisted one of my most amazing massage teachers in the Swedish intensive at the school where I got my massage certification. This is a woman who unlocked an avalanche of conceptual wisdom by just uttering a few words the first time I took a class from her. And also the woman whom I saw a few weeks later just going about her business vacuuming up after class, dancing and singing with joy as she went, and saw halos off her.
So last weekend was a really wonderful experience as the second-day students were all aflush with the first heady rush of learning about how to touch each other’s bodies in a healing way. Just to hear them talk amongst themselves with awe and wonder at the human body buoyed my spirit and let me feel saturated and suspended in sparks.
Angeliska
1 year ago
Ah! The little RESISTANCE card with the flowers was given to me by my friend Jay. I didn’t realize that it had come from Bread and Puppet- but that makes perfect sense. He and our friend Forest used to go up there all the time and make puppets.
Forest used to tell me stories about his experiences there and all the puppets he was working on. I had a vivid dream about him the night before the first time we met- we were dancing the tango in a tiny kitchen. I remember a tall man with darkly smoldering eyes, a beautiful face with a long black beard. He gave me a red flower and I woke up. The next night I found myself in that little kitchen. The man from my dream was there also. Our eyes met, and wordlessly, he swept me into a dance. Then he pulled a faded red silk flower out of his pocket and presented it to me. That is my memory, of how it actually happened.
ps. I just realized that the RESISTANCE card was on my fridge in the hurricane and I had to leave because it was all moldy, boo!
'tine
1 year ago
I remember seeing B&P Theatre at the Ag Field Day held annual at Rutgers when I was a student oh , let’s just say over ten years ago!
I always did like their stage craft and sculptural quality of their puppets.
Kai Smart
1 year ago
I don’t really need you to send me the posters or anything, but I am inspired to share a memory.
Since you like hippie architecture, I will share this.
My friends and I as young teens used to sleep overnight in the old cabin up the forest hill from my friend Aimee’s house. It was a steep climb on a muddy deer path, and the cabin teetered on the edge of a precipice over a gully of sage and madrone. It was up in the oaks, being too high to be in the redwoods. The cabin had housed her parents in when they had first gone “back to the land” (as all our folks had), and they carried water and food up that hill every day. There was no toilet, or electricity, they used kerosene lamps.
The cabin was made of salvaged parts, old doors made the walls, old gingerbread was nailed into eaves, upside-down and backward, it was a patchwork outside, with red boards from a barn and old pilings from the pier. To my delight there was a oak tree that grew through a corner of the living room area. Most of the windows were stained glass, these were salvaged or made by their friends, there was even a window that had a burgundy and indigo stained-glass flower with a mirror at the center.
I liked the remnants of habitation there- candle stubs in silver holders, hippie ashtrays aka abalone shells, a ratty old futon that we slept on, and old Thrasher magazines from the 80’s, brought there during Aimee’s older brother’s teenage years.
We had amazing adventures there, and I liken it to having a playhouse as a child. We just needed a little larger playhouse, to tell each other secrets, and dance to Nirvana on the boombox, and to feel free.
Lisa Marie
1 year ago
I’ve never heard of Bread & Puppet before but I look forward to reading more all about them!
Here’s a memory for you. My friends used to have a production company called Blood & Butter here in San Francisco, and they would put on all kinds of magical parties and gatherings. I remember butoh dancers in some strange museum tucked away in pacific heights. Also a clandestine gathering with everyone in formal wear being led down to a secret spot at Land’s End. One of my favorite times was Halloween in Port Costa, with the party in this funky bar and then everyone staying in the “hotel” across the street. It was really just an old brothel that had photos up of the prostitutes that worked there in the 20’s and 30’s, floors of tiny rooms that we all inhabited for the night, and the persistent smell of a busted sewer pipe in the lobby.
Those were the days of Blood & Butter.
Larisa
1 year ago
I interned and worked with Bread and Puppet in the summer of 1998 and it was one of the best experiences of my life. We would wake up every day, make rhubarb pancakes, pound garlic with a giant wooden mortar and pestle to make aioli, grind rye to make bread, bake the loaves in cavernous clay ovens, papier mâché giant puppet heads, and learn to play new instruments. The evenings were the best–we strapped on our stilts, chose a hurdy-gurdy from the music room, and stilt-danced and played around a campfire or sang Shape-Note songs. We also had “puppet dances” where we drank wine and danced around with the puppets we had made. I made a giant dragon out of bicycle parts.
I’m only now realizing the influence this had on my life and its interconnections with the paths I’ve now taken, especially given that Peter Schumann’s wife Elka’s parents were Helen and Scott Nearing (authors of the Good Life and some of the founders of the back-to-the-earth movement in the U.S.). For a long time, those moments at B & P were the happiest I could remember.
verhext
1 year ago
Lisa Marie: I have heard of parties at that hotel! I would love to live in Port Costa, I looked at an apartment there but the commute is too much.
I would love to start something here again, parties/ performances / political puppetry. Do your friends still do things?
verhext
1 year ago
Larisa: That is amazing. I would love to work with them, but I keep leaving Vermont when it’s interning time!!
Do you have photographs?
Randy
1 year ago
I went to Break and Pupped about a half-dozen times between 88 – 98. I was there the last year, and you hit it right on the head. The party kids crashed it. Still, amazing and so Vermont! Hard to believe they started in New York.
Stacy
1 year ago
I just found your blog and your images are lovely! What a fascinating story. Thanks for telling about it!
Jacki
1 year ago
I just stumbled onto your blog, It’s wonderful =]
Those pictures are gorgeous!
verhext
1 year ago
Hooray for people stumbling in! Nice to meet you all.
Lisa Marie
1 year ago
No, sadly most of them moved away after the whole dot com bust. But please do start something, I think everyone needs a little waking up and celebrating life around here!
Erin
1 year ago
I agree with Lisa Marie, we need to start something. Let’s make more memories! I want my daughters to have memories like these!
Erin