The Bread and Puppet Theater was founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Besides rod-puppet and hand puppet shows for children, the concerns of the first productions were rents, rats, police, and other problems of the neighborhood. More complex theater pieces followed, in which sculpture, music, dance and language were equal partners.
The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus is a large-scale puppet spectacle that explains and teaches riot and rebellion against intolerable situations with the help of state of the art paper-maché weaponry and the appropriate riotous Bread and Puppet Brass Band.
B&P director, Peter Schumann, says of The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus: “Tigers roar, apes drum their chests, horses neigh, and celestial grasshoppers teach ICE agents the basics steps of grasshopper rebellion dancing. A paradise investigation team analyses the earthling’s relationship to paradise, while major representatives of Mother Earth attend a festive Puerto Rican dance of liberation from natural and political disaster."
