{"id":25678,"date":"2024-11-19T14:02:59","date_gmt":"2024-11-19T19:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=25678"},"modified":"2024-11-19T14:03:29","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T19:03:29","slug":"bread-puppet-gray-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2024\/11\/19\/bread-puppet-gray-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"Bread Puppet\u2019s \u2018Meditation On Grief, War And Resistance\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Bread and Puppet Theater describes its new performance, \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9,\u201d as a \u201cmeditation on grief, war, and resistance.\u201d It\u2019s touring the show<\/a>\u2014along with \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show\u201d\u2014from New England to Georgia in November, concluding with a run in New York from Dec. 12 to 15.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peter Schumann, the company\u2019s founder, who turned 90 on June 11, rose to introduce the premiere of \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9\u201d back on Oct. 6 in their Papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 Cathedral as part of their annual \u201cPolitical Leaf Peeping\u201d<\/a> day at the company\u2019s home in Glover, Vermont. He explained to the packed house that the company first staged \u201cGray Lady Cantatas\u201d in 1967 as part of the Week of Angry Arts Against the War in Vietnam. The Gray Ladies were embodied by puppets with spare, sober gray faces, sometimes with mop-like string hair, and a body\/gown seemingly made from sack cloth. The Gray Lady is \u201ca woman who suffers history but doesn\u2019t organize herself against the effects of history,\u201d Schumann said in a 1982 interview quoted in Stefan Brecht\u2019s two-volume history \u201cThe Bread and Puppet Theatre\u201d from 1988.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I first saw a \u201cGray Lady\u201d performance on a stage in the pine forest at the Glover property before one of the big Domestic Resurrection Circuses during the summer of 1996. I think it was the first Bread and Puppet performance I ever saw. It struck me then as very slow and quiet and strange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Gray Lady was recently revived as the \u201cGaza Grey Lady Cantata\u201d during the company\u2019s performances last summer. Co-directed by father-daughter team, Peter and Maria Schumann, it was a harrowing and heartbreaking show of mothers and babies, skeletons, stabbing squadrons of warplanes, and texts from Palestinians enduring the war in Gaza: \u201cWe wait for our death every minute,\u201d \u201cWe are still here. Don\u2019t forget us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9\u201d performed in Glover in early October was a series of dances, mainly with puppeteers operating a single Gray Lady puppet\u2014plus some of the writings of Palestinians that were included in the summer show. The version now on tour, which I saw at Friends Meeting at Cambridge on Nov. 15, has removed the texts to become a series of tableaus and pantomime dances, mostly silent, but occasionally punctuated with clacking, a contraption that makes a windy noise, cymbal clashes, violin, and, at the end, singing (I think Bach\u2019s Cantata 140, which Schumann has called the \u201cWake Up\u201d cantata).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The show opens with performers humming to accompany a procession of black banners each painted with a white arm reaching upward. A Gray Lady puppet meanders among them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Puppeteers clad all in white raise their clasped hands in a prayerful gesture mimicking giant white hands on a tall pole trailing white sheets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As a cymbal clashes and a contraption clacks, giant silver legs swing back and forth, as if walking or kicking. Performers wearing white masks\u2014that are blank save for eye holes and the lettering \u201cteeth\u201d as mouths\u2014come out one by one and drop Gray Lady puppets in a pile atop the giant clasped hands that have now been laid on the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Puppeteers carefully pile Gray Lady puppets at the front of the stage as one Gray Lady observes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Giant flat cardboard faces roll left and right across the stage, then rise up around a crowd of Gray Ladies, and press them to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Gray Lady holds a drawing of a reclining woman and puppeteers in teeth masks take it from her, tear it up, and give it back to her. She lets the pieces fall to the floor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A puppeteer takes a tear (a glass crystal from a chandelier) from a spinning, gray papier-m\u00e2ch\u00e9 earth and attaches it to a Gray Lady\u2019s head. It slowly descends from her eye on a string as puppeteers in teeth masks with giant white cardboard hands watch or point at her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Banners printed with skeltons cooking (labeled \u201cSoup\u201d), riding a woman (\u201cByby\u201d), floating over factories (\u201cCity and Smoke\u201d), running a lever on a series of pipes (\u201cToday\u201d) are whipped about around a Gray Lady. The performers holding the banners form into a line that parades across the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A pair of giant white hands bring gray hands holding an infant to the Gray Lady, and the gray hands become hers, she holding the infant. The big white hands turn up and out becoming like angel wings off her shoulders. A performer sings (Bach, I assume). Then the big hands are joined to giant arms that reach out from the Gray Lady in a giant embrace that feels wider, bigger than the stage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A group of black banners painted with white arms reaching up fill the stage around a performer in the middle holding a wooden board painted to read: \u201cA Vigil For Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGray Lady Cantata #9\u201d was followed by a performance of \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show,\u201d a raucous, clowning lecture. Schumann began deploying the term \u201cPossibilitarian\u201d in shows, artworks and books in the early 2000s, Bread and Puppet\u2019s Press has written<\/a>, \u201cto evoke outside-the-box thinking and action \u2026 [to] call for an exuberant rebellion to save humanity and the planet from the ravages of the capitalist empire.\u201d This particular show was a raspberry against \u201cthe unbearable dilemmas of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt a time when Freedom and Democracy slaughter babies and moms by the dozen every day and don\u2019t even seem to have any understanding of what they are doing to the world or to themselves,\u201d Schumann has said<\/a>, \u201cwe Possibilitarians, operating on the Principle of Hope, put on our boots to kick aside impossibility and declare new possibility in response to this obviously despaired situation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cGoons\u201d arrive\u2014tall, flat cardboard puppets of white guys in suits and across their eyes words: \u201cNormality,\u201d \u201cCompliance,\u201d \u201cHumdrum,\u201d \u201cInnocence,\u201d \u201cN.Y. Times,\u201d \u201cTruth.\u201d They\u2019re served pumpernickel bread and \u201canti-outrage soup for outrage relief.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A giant puppet\u2014a white guy in an American flag top hat\u2014stomps onto stage brandishing a cigar, menacing the puppeteers. They try to fight him but he easily blows them over, until they tickle him into collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPuppeteers and nonsense providers,\u201d the narrator says, join with frogs and dancing horses to \u201cbattle the congress of cowards\u201d who use citizens money to bomb hospitals, assassinate reporters, and other \u201catrocities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A giant demon head dances to a clashing cymbal. Performers wearing simple white masks with lurid grins emerge from behind it, and point red arrows at the demon. Then performers clad as fire\u2014with cardboard flame hats and hands\u2014surround the demon head\u2014\u201cCardboard flame immolation of capitalist empire,\u201d the narrator explains\u2014until the head and flames are all thrown to the floor. \u201cTo declare solidarity with the deep down totality of resistance. This is the end of our show and the beginning of the Possibilitarian take over of society.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The narrator plays a fiddle, a green (cardboard) door dances onto the stage, and members of the audience are invited to pass through it to receive bread slathered with garlic aioli and join the \u201cnew Possibilitarian state.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Previous Bread and Puppet coverage:<\/strong> https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/tag\/bread-and-puppet\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by\u00a0contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And\u00a0sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a>\u00a0so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2024 or the respective creato<\/em>rs.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9″ at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Bread
Bread and Puppet Theater’s \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show” at Friends Meeting at Cambridge, Nov. 15, 2024. (\u00a9Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bread and Puppet Theater describes its new performance, \u201cGray Lady Cantata #9,\u201d as a \u201cmeditation on grief, war, and resistance.\u201d It\u2019s touring the show\u2014along with \u201cThe Possibilitarian Everything Imperatives Show\u201d\u2014from New England to Georgia in November, concluding with a run in New York from Dec. 12 to 15. Peter Schumann, the company\u2019s founder, who turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,109,110],"tags":[13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25678"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25678"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25678\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25684,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25678\/revisions\/25684"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}