Bread + Puppet Theater
The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus
Sunday, November 4
Performance begins: 3:00pm
Blum & Poe, Los Angeles
Open to the public, donations suggested
Blum & Poe, in collaboration with Three Day Weekend, is pleased to announce Bread and Puppet Theater's The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus.
The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus is a show that explains and teaches riot and rebellion against intolerable situations with the help of state of the art papier-mâché weaponry and the appropriate riotous Bread and Puppet Brass Band. After the performances Bread and Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and "Cheap Art" will be for sale. Admission is by donation, $10−$25 suggested, no one turned away for lack of funds.
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. Bread and Puppet is one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country.
Three Day Weekend is a roving project space operated by Dave Muller. Exhibitions are generally three days long, occurring on holidays and their weekends (however, there are exceptions). While currently based in Los Angeles, TDW has organized shows in New York, Houston, Vienna, Tokyo, Malmo, and London. Three Day Weekend was established in early 1994 in downtown Los Angeles.