{"id":19932,"date":"2021-08-03T08:43:45","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T12:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=19932"},"modified":"2021-08-04T11:05:33","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T15:05:33","slug":"elka-schumann","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2021\/08\/03\/elka-schumann\/","title":{"rendered":"Goodbye To Elka Schumann Of Bread And Puppet Theater"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elka Schumann, co-founder of Vermont\u2019s legendary progressive activist Bread and Puppet Theater, died Sunday, afternoon Aug. 1, \u201csurrounded by her five children and her partner Peter,\u201d DeeDee Halleck writes. Schumann\u2014”our beloved matriarch,” the theater company said<\/a> on Facebook\u2014was 85. She was a powerhouse behind the theater and an inspiration to many.<\/p>\n

\u201cElka enabled the theater in so many ways,\u201d Halleck, a friend dating back to their days as young mothers raising children together in Manhattan, writes on Facebook<\/a>. \u201cHer loving dedication and brilliant coordination of graphic production was the solid base of financial support for all of the theater’s activities. Her musical abilities and strength of purpose established and enriched the constant presence of musical practice and performance which was, from the beginning, an essential element in all that the theater does.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elka<\/a>
Elka Schumann (with braces) performing in “Hallelujah” at Bread and Puppet, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 25, 2019. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Schumann came from an illustrious family. Her grandfather was Scott Nearing, pacifist, vegetarian, critic of capitalism, environmentalist, and pioneer of the \u201cback to the land\u201d movement following World War II.<\/p>\n

She was born Elka Leigh Scott in the Soviet Union in August 1935 to John and Masha Dikareva Scott. Her mother was Russian. Her father (he dropped the Nearing last name and used his middle name instead when he left college) arrived in the Soviet Union in 1932, pursuing his interest in communism and finding work in a steel mill in Magnitogorsk, to \u201clend a hand in the construction of a society which seemed to be at least one step ahead of the American.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Elka<\/a>
Elka Schumann (center) sings during a memorial in the pine forest at Bread and Puppet, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 21 2015. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But as Soviet suspicion of foreigners grew, Scott was shunned at the factory. He ended up as a journalist in Moscow. Two weeks before Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, Scott was expelled from the country for allegedly \u201cpublishing slanderous articles\u201d about Soviet foreign policy and \u201cinventing\u201d reports of Soviet-German tensions. The family traveled by boat to Japan, then Hawaii, then San Francisco, then by train to New York.<\/p>\n

Scott made his name with his first book, \u201cBehind the Urals,\u201d from 1942, a frank look at what he saw in the Soviet Union, the good and the very bad. He became a reporter and editor at Time-Life publishing. Masha raised money for Russian War Relief.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very proud of being Russian and fighting the Nazis,\u201d Schumann recalled in a 2016 oral history interview by the Vermont Historical Society\u2019s Digital Vermont project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Elka<\/a>
Elka Schumann (seated at center) plays recoder in the Bread and Puppet Museum, Glover, Vermont, Aug. 22 2015. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the war, the family moved to Berlin, Germany, where Scott opened Time\u2019s Central European Bureau. But tensions grew between the Soviets and the West, and the Soviets became regarded as an enemy. \u201cIt was shocking for me. Suddenly it was something not to flaunt, oh, I\u2019m from Russia,\u201d Schumann said in the 2016 oral history interview.<\/p>\n

The family moved to Ridgefield, Connecticut, in 1948. Scott became assistant to Time-Life publisher Henry Luce in 1952, and an avid anti-communist and conservative.<\/p>\n

While studying at Bryn Mawr College, Elka Schumann spent her junior year in Munich, Germany, where in 1956 she met Peter Schumann, an artist and performer. They first encountered each other when a friend of Peter’s tried to recruit her for their dance company, and she went to visit Peter in a hospital, where he was recovering from a fractured skull received when his bicycle was hit by a motorcycle. Elka thought of becoming a children\u2019s book illustrator. The couple was married in 1959, started having children, and in 1961 moved to Connecticut, then New York City. There Peter connected with the Living Theatre and other avant-garde troupes, and founded Bread and Puppet on Manhattan\u2019s Lower East side in 1963. The theater\u2019s giant puppets became icons of 1960s anti-Vietnam War protests.<\/p>\n

“Three main elements shaped the style and content of this theater in its early years,”\u00a0Schumann wrote in “A Short History of the Bread and Puppet Museum” from 1989, “performances with and for children in the streets of New York City; a growing political awareness resulting in massive participation with puppets and masks in peace rallies and protest marches against social injustices and the Vietnam War; and the profound influence of [Peter] Schumann’s background and education\u2014folklore and folk art, medieval art and the art of the Dadaists and German Expressionists.”<\/p>\n