The show begins with “The King Story” from 1963, a fable of a king scared by an invading monster, who is undone by seeking help from a murderous knight.
The performance offers dances of skeletons, and chairs, and caribou, and the Statue of Liberty with an Uncle Sam goon. Sections of the U.S. Constitution are called out–about due process, about elected officials taking bribes, about unreasonable searches, about arrests.
After a white-winged dragon appears, a narrator announces: “Here you see the snow-bound bourgeois, unable to see the reality of the day. And here you see the reality of the day. Infrastructure destroyed and thousands of civilians murdered in Iran by U.S. bombs. Israel continuing to commit genocide in Gaza. Families violently kidnapped and detained by ICE. Ongoing U.S. military intervention in Venezuela, Nigeria, Somalia, and Cuba. And hundreds of thousands bombarded as they flee their homes in Lebanon. In the past 48 days, Israel attacks on Lebanon have killed 2,700 civilians, wounded over 6,000, and displaced 1.2 million, as paid for with U.S. taxpayer dollars, and as supported by the U.S. Congress of Cowards.”
A sailing ship painted with red “Palestinian poppies” and waving flags arrives.
Bread and Puppet co-founder Peter Schumann writes, “The sitting mind realizes the predicament of the rats, assigned to spread the plague which opens the gates of darkness as fears chase the populations across the face of the earth. Humanity’s humdrum is now outrageous and no longer composed of beloved details. The rats in charge of spreading the plague are ordered to repurpose human freedom and democracy into guns, bombs, and starvation. Our own futuristic Not-Yet is impatient and unready. We must take our cardboard provocations into the revolting streets of life, with help from our paper-maché divinities, to succeed and succeed.”
