Bread and Puppet Theater brought their “Diagonal Life Circus” to Cambridge Common yesterday afternoon, as the culminating performance of Cambridge Arts’ free, annual Summer In The City series. (I work part-time for Cambridge Arts.)
“Reality is either horizontal or vertical or both. The horizontal produces us, and eventually takes us back into its giant arms’ embrace. The vertical is the exceptional human predicament, the up- and forward-striding ambition that makes history and warfare,” Bread and Puppet Director Peter Schumann has said. “The diagonal results from the hurts that the vertical suffers in the process. It is our common human fate, the hard-to-sustain-in-between life, neither up nor down that needs to muster all its strength to lift itself up and the courage to invent tricks that keep it from falling.”
The circus honored “trans lives cut short” and the ideals of the Haitian Revolution of 1804. It challenged pipeline development that threatens water (“Water is life!” performers shouted), the treatment of migrant families, winter depression, and court rulings limiting access to abortion. The circus featured an “International Coalition of Swimmers Against the Economic Tide” (they were washed away by a tidal wave), flags, stilters, a brass band, and puppet ponies, tigers and deities. After the performance, the troupe served the audience their famous sourdough rye bread with garlic aioli.
Bread and Puppet’s “Fall 2019 New England Little Big Tour” is bringing the circus to towns across New England: to the Bread and Roses Labor Heritage Festival in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at 4:20 p.m. Sept. 2; to the Sanctuary at Shephardsfield in East Haddam, Connecticut, at 7 p.m. Sept. 5; to Bard College at Annendale-on-Hudson, New York, at 3 p.m. Sept. 7; and to Park Hill Orchard in Easthampton, Massachusetts, at 3 p.m. Sept. 8.
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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon. And sign up for our free, weekly newsletter so that you don’t miss any of our reporting.