I don’t know if we would have ever found Bread and Puppet Theater without a recommendation from our friend Ellen but it was well worth the additional drive to Glover, VT. Bread and Puppet has been putting on political theater since 1974 in this location. The performances feature funny and serious skits, people on stilts and giant flags, and of course puppets of all sizes and shapes.

Hundreds of spectators sit on a grassy hillside watching an outdoor performance with a brass band, decorated school buses, and a large tie-dye backdrop. *The "stage" and the band warming everyone up for the show.* Performers in white costumes wave large black-and-white flags on a grassy field as a crowd watches, with painted buses and forest behind them. *A flag performance.* Outdoor theater performance on a grassy hillside with costumed dancers near painted school buses, watched by a large seated crowd *The turkey skit was the funniest of the show.* Crowd of people on a grass field watching a towering straw effigy puppet with wings and a human face, backed by tall pine trees. *Giant puppet that was part of the Domestic Resurrection Circus after the main event.* Crowd of adults and a toddler lined up on a grassy field outside a rustic wood shed with a Bread House sign and sunflowers *Mazie and I got some bread with a heavy garlic butter shmear.*

Why do they serve bread with the theater?

“We give you a piece of bread with the puppet show because our bread and theater belong together. For a long time the theater arts have been separated from the stomach. Theater was entertainment. Entertainment was meant for the skin. Bread was meant for the stomach. The old rites of baking, eating and offering bread were forgotten. The bread became mush. We would like you to take your shoes off when you come to our puppet show or we would like to bless you with the fiddle bow. The bread shall remind you of the sacrament of eating.” — Peter Schumann

I also enjoyed the spirit of the Cheap Art Manifesto.

Printed black-and-white flyer titled the WHY CHEAP ART? manifesto by Bread and Puppet Glover Vermont 1984