Political protest theater troupe performing antiwar tragedy in streets around UConn

The legendary Vermont-based political protest performance troupe Bread and Puppet Theater returns to Connecticut this weekend for two performances of Aeschylus’ war-themed Greek tragedy “The Persians” outdoors on UConn’s South Campus Lawn at 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

The performance includes gigantic puppets, 20 community volunteers assisting the puppeteers, choral wailing and Bread and Puppets singular “Lubberland” style of gesturing and movement, giant paintings, dance and a classical score drawn from J.S. Bach.

“The Persians” was first performed in 472 B.C., part of a tradition of Greek drama that celebrated war victories, but different from many examples of that genre because of the way it elicits sympathy for the victims and decries war in general. Due to its compassionate approach, “The Persians” has often been revived as an anti-war protest piece, including during the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Iraq War and now in reaction to Afghanistan and Ukraine. In notes on his production, Bread and Puppet Theater founder Peter Schumann asks “Can our own permanently warring military industrial empire learn from this?”

The two outdoor performances of “The Persians” will be preceded days earlier by Bread and Puppet’s colorful street shows at noon on Wednesday along UConn’s Fairfield Way and a forum discussion on “Making and Performing a Puppet Tragedy” at noon on Thursday in the UConn Dramatic Arts Department’s Mobius Theatre, with Schumann himself (now 87 years old) as one of the participants in the discussion.

Tickets for “The Persians” are $15, $10 for children. The other events are free, and the forum will be livestreamed on Zoom and Facebook and then kept online on the YouTube and Facebook pages of UConn’s Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry.

Bread and Puppet formed in the early 1960s in the Lower East of New York City, performing socially relevant puppet shows about poverty, tenement living and anti-war protests. The company has always alternated smaller indoor or street corner performances with larger-than-life puppets that were part of parades, pageants and large outdoor performances.

In 1974, Bread and Puppet moved to farmland in Glover, Vermont, where the company performs regularly and also creates its international tours. From the mid-1970s until the late ‘90s it was also known for hosting its large outdoor summer Domestic Resurrection Circus festivals.

John Bell, the director of UConn’s Ballard Institute & Museum of Puppetry, is one of many puppeteers in the state who’ve worked with or been influenced by Bread and Puppet. Bell worked with the company in the 1970s, wrote a book about them (“Landscape and Desire: Bread and Puppet Pageants in the 1990s”) and does his own political puppetry projects as a member of the Brooklyn-based troupe Great Small Works.

The University of Connecticut has one of the most prestigious puppetry programs in the U.S. This month, the puppetry program is also busy with performances of the musical “Little Shop of Horrors” at UConn’s Connecticut Repertory Theatre, for which the puppeteers designed the comically carnivorous plant Audrey II.

Bread and Puppet has visited Connecticut many times, including for a pageant on New Haven Green as part of the very first International Festival of Arts & Ideas in 1996. The troupe has regularly visited Middletown at the invitation of the local socially conscious theater Artfarm.

The first time Bread and Puppet performed at the University of Connecticut was over 50 years ago, in 1970.

“The Persians” by Aeschylus will be performed by Bread and Puppet Theater Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. on the South Campus Lawn of the University of Connecticut, Storrs. $15, $10 students. Audience members should bring their own chairs and blankets. There are also street performances at noon on Wednesday on UConn’s Fairfield Way and a forum on “Bread and Puppet’s ‘Persians’: Making and Performing a Puppet Tragedy” at noon on Thursday in the UConn Dramatic Arts Department’s Mobius Theatre. More information and registration for the forum is at bimp.uconn.edu.

Christopher Arnott can be reached at carnott@courant.com.