Bread & Puppet Theater returns for four shows starting April 19th at Spontaneous Celebrations with its new play, "The Basic Bye-Bye Show." The play is a manifesto inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s apocalyptic woodcuts and the daily news.
Bread & Puppet's "The Basic Bye-Bye Show," a manifesto on transformation inspired by Albrecht Dürer’s apocalyptic woodcuts and the daily news addresses the role of guns in the US politics, culture, and economy, and helps us say bye-bye to this "ill-conceived symbol of a free people." Photo by Mark Dannenhauer
"The Basic Bye-Bye Show originally set out to define and illuminate the need for basic bye-byes in our culture, but has progressed to respond to the event of regular mass shootings, in particular the recent massacre in the Florida high school," said director Peter Schumann. “The theme is the birth of the gun by the 2nd Amendment Holy Cow, presided over by James Madison, which leads to the routine occurrence of horror and ends with the funeralization of that ill-conceived symbol of a free people.”
The play expands on the traditional bye-byes of funerals and train stations by turning the saying of bye-bye into a political act. It helps us say bye-bye to the gun -- as a practical tool for massacre-making, as a symbol of "freedom," as an instrument of political influence, and as an economic dependency. The show mourns the victims of gun massacres and turns this mourning toward the transformative political possibility of saying bye-bye to the gun once and for all.
After the performance Bread & Puppet personnel will serve its famous free sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread & Puppet’s Cheap Art – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press will be for sale.
Bread & Puppet's "The Basic Bye-Bye Show," will be performed at 7:30 pm Thursday-Sunday, April 19th-22nd, at Spontaneous Celebrations (45 Danforth St., Jamaica Plain). Admission is by donation of a $10-$25 sliding scale, and no one will be turned away. For more information please visit breadandpuppet.org.
About Bread & Puppet
Bread & Puppet Theater is an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick. Its shows are political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of paper maché and cardboard. Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City's Lower East Side, the theater has been based in the North East Kingdom of Vermont since the early 1970s.