Peter Schumann

Template:Short description Template:Infobox person Template:Update Peter Schumann (born 11 June 1934) is the co-founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Born in Silesia, he was a sculptor and dancer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1961. In 1963 he founded Bread & Puppet in New York City, and in 1970 moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, eventually settling in Glover, Vermont, where the company still performs. Schumann's best known work is the Domestic Resurrection Circus, performed annually by the Bread and Puppet Theater until 1998. <ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>He was married to theater co-founder Elka Schumann until her death in August 2021.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Career

The Bread and Puppet Theater

Peter Schumann and his wife Elka co-founded the Bread and Puppet Theater in 1963 in New York City.<ref name="Buffalo">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The theater is named for its combination of puppetry shows with free freshly baked bread, generally served with a dipping sauce.<ref name="Buffalo"/> The company is known, according to The Buffalo News for "anarchic, noncommercial, participatory and politically charged approach to art."<ref name="Buffalo"/> Among the notable Bread and Puppet Theater shows directed by Schumann are "Nativity 1992", described by The New York Times as "an exemplar of performance folk art",<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and "The Divine Reality Comedy".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He also participated in the Angry Arts week in January 1967.<ref>Template:Cite book, p. 43</ref>

The Domestic Resurrection Circus

After Bread & Puppet's first decade in New York City, Schumann decided to take an offer from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, to become the college's first theater-in-residence.<ref>Brecht, Stefan. "The Bread and Puppet Theater" (1988)</ref> After a few years, Schumann composed his first Domestic Resurrection Circus. Blending vaudeville comedy with political commentary, as well as the company's trademark giant puppets, the Circus became a tradition each summer. After Schumann moved to Glover, Vermont, in 1973, the Circuses continued. The Domestic Resurrection Circus's last year was 1998, when over 30,000 people attended. Since then, a smaller circus is performed every weekend during the summer.

Palestine exhibits

In 2007 Schumann premiered "Independence Paintings: Inspired by Four Stories" in Boston and Burlington, Vermont.<ref name="Seven">Picard, Ken. (September 19, 2007) Over the Wall. Seven Days. Retrieved 13 May 2008.</ref> The series was inspired by ten days Schumann spent in the Occupied Territories of Palestine, as well as John Hersey's 'The Wall', a graphic account of the birth, development, and destruction of the Warsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewish ghettos established by Nazi Germany during the Jewish Holocaust. The series proved controversial, with critics labeling Schumann's works as "anti-Zionist", "anti-Semitic" and "soft-core Holocaust denial", accusations Schumann denied, stating that "I'm not saying that what's happening in Palestine is the same as what happened in Warsaw ... but it's certainly a reminder."<ref name="Seven"/> While Schumann later acknowledged that he "may have unnecessarily hurt some people's feelings" with the series, he returned in 2008 to the theme of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in his subsequent art series, "The University of Majd: The Story of a Palestinian Youth", which addresses a case of false imprisonment in Israel.<ref>Cook, Greg. (January 29, 2008) Going to Hell The Phoenix. Retrieved 13 May 2008.</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Published works

• Puppen und Masken. Das Bread and Puppet Theater, Fischer, Frankfurt am Main/Germany, 1973.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bread and Puppet Theater - THIS IS, 1980.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bread and Puppet: HALLELUJAH, 1983.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Uprising of the Beast After the Good Life Fails, 1987.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• White Horse Butcher, 1988.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bible, 1991.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The Radicality of the Puppet Theater, 1991.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• St. Francis Preaches to the Birds, 1992. <ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• The old art of puppetry in the new world order, 1993.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bread: A lecture to art students at SUNY/Purchase, New York. 1987, reprint 1994.
• Bread & Puppet. Green Man, 1996.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Life of a Squirrel, 1996.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• What, At the End of This Century, Is the Situation of Puppets and Performing Objects?, 1999.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
• Puppet Uprising: Peter Schumman's Bread & Puppet Theater, 2003.<ref>Template:Citation</ref>
• Planet Kasper: Comix and Tragix, 2011.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Shatterer Book, 2013.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bread & Sentences, 2015.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Planet Kasper Volume Two: Comix & Tragix, 2015.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Faust 3, 2016.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Theatrum Mundi, 2017.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Riot, 2017.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Life and Death of Charlotte Salomon, 2018.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• We, 2018.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• From the Possibilitarian Arsenal of Belligerent and Not So Belligerent Slogans, 2018.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Diagonal Man Theory + Praxis: Volume I, 2019.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Diagonal Man Theory + Praxis: Volume 2, 2019.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• A Child's Deprimer, 2019.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Bedsheet Mitigations, 2020.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• All, Nothing, Nothing At All, 2020.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Handouts and Obligations, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Declaration of Light, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Es Ist Vollbracht - Mission Accomplished, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• She Sits She Rides She Flies, 2021.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Kropotkin Says, 2023.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Tears Clouds Trees, 2023.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Gaza Genocide Bedsheets, 2023.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• Mister Aeschylus' The Persians, 2024.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
• We Possibilitarians One, 2024.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Further reading

• Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs and Essays on the Bread and Puppet Theater, Ronald T. Simon and Marc Estrin, 2004.

External links

• Gallery of a Peter Schumann workshop at the 2007 Scenofest from Scenography
• Bread & Puppet website
• Bread & Puppet Press website
• Peter Schumann | World Encyclopedia of Puppetry Arts
• At 89, Still Making Art (and Bread) With a Message Archived from Original 16 August 2023