9/10/26: Bread & Puppet Theater presents “The Upside Down World Circus”
7:00pm (Doors open at 6:30pm)
Location: Nordica Auditorium, Merrill Hall, 224 Main St., Farmington ME
Tickets: $10-$25 suggested donation with no one turned away for lack of funds; free for UMF students. Advance tickets available beginning Aug. 4th at Up Front & Pleasant Gourmet (157 Front St., Farmington ME; Open Tues.-Fri: 10am-5pm, and 1st & 3rd Sat. of each month from 10am-2pm)
The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is hitting the road! This Fall The Upside Down World Circus will tour cities and towns from Glover to New York to Minneapolis and more! Get ready for a show featuring puppets big and small, acts serious and silly, and performances slapstick and sublime. Stilt dancers, paper maché beasts, and a riotous brass band make a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.
“Is it or is it not?
Am I asleep or am I awake?
Am I a cockroach or am I a me?
Possibilitarians! We must demonstrate humanity’s upside-down situation in the face of the government’s depraved falsehoods. Luxury silence and despair must be replaced by revolt orchestras that radically oppose the radically wrong system.
It is time to unforget the revolution-in-progress and aim for the evermore on the universe’s shore.”
After the show Bread & Puppet will serve its famous 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.
Is the show ok for kids? While there is nothing inappropriate for children in our shows, we do speak on heavy topics. We generally tell parents that if they would allow their children to read a newspaper, the show will be fine for them.
More about Bread & Puppet Theater:
The Bread & Puppet Theater is a political puppet theater founded in 1963 by Peter & Elka Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side. Now based in Glover, VT, the company regularly tours the country and world with tightly composed theater pieces as well as sprawling outdoor pageants. The internationally celebrated company champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance, and slapstick elements. Believing that theater is a basic necessity like bread, the company frequently brings its work to the streets for those who may not otherwise go to the theater. Its shows are political and spectacular, with puppets often on stilts, wearing huge masks with expressive faces, singing, dancing, and playing music.
Bread and Puppet is recognized throughout the world and has won distinction at international theater festivals in Italy, Poland, Colombia, and Yugoslavia, beginning with their break-out performances at the 1968 Nancy Festival in France. Notable awards include the Erasmus Prize of Amsterdam, 4 Obies, the Puppeteers of America’s President Award, and the Vermont Governor’s Award. Bread and Puppet is constantly active, performing at its farm in Glover, VT, and in local churches, schools and parades. It regularly tours Europe, Canada, and the United States and has recently visited El Salvador, Haiti, Russia, and Korea.
Bread & Puppet continues making new work and is one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country.