Visiting our friends at Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont, buried under the snow and fringed with the icicles of mid-winter, with temperatures below zero, it can look like the place is frozen in hibernation. Especially compared to the hive of activity of dozens of performers and support staff coming from all over the world during the lush green days of summer to present shows attended by crowds of hundreds of people each weekend.
Now the school bus that the company toured the country in during autumn is parked along the highway that runs through the property and is snowed in. Narrow shoveled paths wind through feet of snow to the Puppeteers House and the gray Museum barn. The kitchen, bustling to feed everyone in the summer, is cold and quiet and dormant. The wooden seat of the rope swing in the big old tree beside the Puppeteers’ House is stilled under the snow. Footsteps track through the snow to the unheated, empty Paper-Maché barn theater, under skies of blue and gray.
But performances go on, even as temperatures reach -10 Fahrenheit. In winter, the company shrinks down to a handful of performers (some living in the white-painted Puppeteers’ House fronting the highway, some with homes or housesitting in nearby towns) as well as volunteers. They perform many weekends of the winter up in the “Ballroom” above a workshop, surprisingly cozy warm with a wood stove blazing. The home fires become smoke curling out of chimneys. And the company performs around the region, including protests at Vermont’s capital in Montpelier. A small crew keeps the Printshop up the slippery dirt road behind the Puppeteers’ House pumping out woodcuts carved from masonite over many decades by Bread and Puppet co-founder Peter Schumann, a key income stream for the theater year-round. This winter existence of the theater feels like a seed gathering energy as it slowly, patiently prepares to germinate in the coming muddy, brown spring.
Our car immediately got stuck in the snow when we visited during the first weekend in February to see “Life and Death Precision Dances with Happiness Obligation Prologue,” the last performance of a series of winter shows. Maybe a couple dozen people arrived, several from Montreal, to see the show performed by about 11 people. After the performance, a gang of folks kindly helped push our vehicle free.
