Last weekend
I’m behind on everything. I feel like I’m operating on slow motion. I haven’t wished happy birthday to several people (jedihealer and hlynn are two of them -- happy belated birthday!), and here I am posting about stuff that happened a week ago.
Last weekend ended up being unplanned family together time. The three of us went to a movie and two very Vermonty activities - Circus Smirkus and Bread & Puppet.
The movie was Stardust. It thought it was OK - my biggest problem was that I think Clare Danes was miscast, and that Gwenyth Paltrow, or just someone else, would have been better. I like Danes a lot, but just not for this part. The other strange thing for me about this movie was that I was rooting for the bad guy, which is not like me (I am not a darksider by nature). Michelle Pfeiffer plays this ancient witch who needs to eat the heart of a falling star (Danes) to become young again. I can sympathize with someone who would want to retain her youth, and since Pfeiffer (who is my age in real life) really did look so much better as a young witch than an old crone, there was a part of me that hoped she’d succeed. Youth wins again, especially in fairy tales.
Circus Smirkus: The first time I went to this was when Caroline was just 6 months old. Started by a local guy, it’s a circus made up entirely of kids that travels around Vermont and New England in the summer. For years we never missed a summer show, and then the last few years life and travel and work intervened, and a tradition was broken. I’m so glad we got to go again, reviving an old tradition.
Bread & Puppet: I first went to Bread & Puppet when I was a reporter at the Free Press, in 1985, to cover it - and then we went every summer, without fail, no matter what the weather forecast, even with baby or toddler in tow. It is one of the most awe-inspiring, beautiful and thought-provoking events around.
It used to be a weekend-long annual event - people would come from all over the country, the world even, camp out and enjoy counterculture, politics and performance art. The setting is breathtaking - a huge farm in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont, with wide-open fields, scented pine forests, views of distant mountains. The founder is a well-respected puppeteer (Peter Schumann), who has been around for decades, and most of the performances are puppet-based - mostly puppets that are lifesize or bigger. Because he also bakes bread, which he hands out for free, the group, and the weekend, became known as Bread & Puppet.
In 1998, tragedy struck. The event had gotten bigger and bigger, and was overwhelming the small community it was based in. There was a fight in a campground, and someone died. B&P decided to cancel its annual weekend show.
This happened at the same time that I started going to GenCon, and it is sort of interesting to me that one tradition picked up when the other one died. If that hadn’t happened, I’m sure there would eventually have been a conflict.
B&P decided to offer smaller shows throughout the summer (and continues to travel to parades and protests around the country). I’m not sure why we never went - disappointment that the new format would not be equal to the old, scheduling problems, laziness … Last Sunday, we made the hour trek to Glover, and I am so so glad I did.
The grounds haven’t changed at all. The main event, the circus, takes place on a natural hillside theater, with the audience sitting on blankets amid the tall grass and grasshoppers. The circus is a series of skits, usually making political commentary on current events. This is a very liberal leaning bunch of people - although every politician comes under attack. It is pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-farmers, anti-industry, anti-Wal-Mart. It’s the Woodstock generation, in all its tie-dye, long-hair, no-bras glory.
There were a lot of people there Sunday, not as crowded as the old days, but we still ran into several people we knew. The parking was definitely better than before - no long trek through woods and fields. The skits were just as enigmatic and topical as usual: one about Wal-Mart and a great one about the expense of making bottled water.
Immediately after the circus was the pageant, which was an confusing as ever. We went into the museum, which holds puppets and stage sets from 40 years worth of performances, and the store, where Caroline bought posters for her dorm room. The weather was perfect, too - it was a great day.
Here are some photos, which only capture a sense of the beauty of Bread & Puppet.
Before the show starts, they have little sideshows. Here's one of two farmers taking time out from chores to dance with each other:
A skit by the Rotten Ideas Theater Co. about the failure of both the Democrat and Republican parties to accomplish much:
Little kids playing bulldozers to make a Wal-Mart parking lot:
This skit is about Homeland Securities' dilemma in Derby Line, Vermont, which straddles the Canadian-US border. How to check passports when half the library is in Canada and the other half in th US? In this skit, the woman is puzzled about her nationality, and the solution was to saw her in half:
Big puppets:
The creator is pretty amazing on very tall stilts:
Oh look, there's even a video of the performance the day we were there on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHNq6U55eko
And a recent New York Times article (restricted to subscribers).
Last weekend ended up being unplanned family together time. The three of us went to a movie and two very Vermonty activities - Circus Smirkus and Bread & Puppet.
The movie was Stardust. It thought it was OK - my biggest problem was that I think Clare Danes was miscast, and that Gwenyth Paltrow, or just someone else, would have been better. I like Danes a lot, but just not for this part. The other strange thing for me about this movie was that I was rooting for the bad guy, which is not like me (I am not a darksider by nature). Michelle Pfeiffer plays this ancient witch who needs to eat the heart of a falling star (Danes) to become young again. I can sympathize with someone who would want to retain her youth, and since Pfeiffer (who is my age in real life) really did look so much better as a young witch than an old crone, there was a part of me that hoped she’d succeed. Youth wins again, especially in fairy tales.
Circus Smirkus: The first time I went to this was when Caroline was just 6 months old. Started by a local guy, it’s a circus made up entirely of kids that travels around Vermont and New England in the summer. For years we never missed a summer show, and then the last few years life and travel and work intervened, and a tradition was broken. I’m so glad we got to go again, reviving an old tradition.
Bread & Puppet: I first went to Bread & Puppet when I was a reporter at the Free Press, in 1985, to cover it - and then we went every summer, without fail, no matter what the weather forecast, even with baby or toddler in tow. It is one of the most awe-inspiring, beautiful and thought-provoking events around.
It used to be a weekend-long annual event - people would come from all over the country, the world even, camp out and enjoy counterculture, politics and performance art. The setting is breathtaking - a huge farm in the middle-of-nowhere Vermont, with wide-open fields, scented pine forests, views of distant mountains. The founder is a well-respected puppeteer (Peter Schumann), who has been around for decades, and most of the performances are puppet-based - mostly puppets that are lifesize or bigger. Because he also bakes bread, which he hands out for free, the group, and the weekend, became known as Bread & Puppet.
In 1998, tragedy struck. The event had gotten bigger and bigger, and was overwhelming the small community it was based in. There was a fight in a campground, and someone died. B&P decided to cancel its annual weekend show.
This happened at the same time that I started going to GenCon, and it is sort of interesting to me that one tradition picked up when the other one died. If that hadn’t happened, I’m sure there would eventually have been a conflict.
B&P decided to offer smaller shows throughout the summer (and continues to travel to parades and protests around the country). I’m not sure why we never went - disappointment that the new format would not be equal to the old, scheduling problems, laziness … Last Sunday, we made the hour trek to Glover, and I am so so glad I did.
The grounds haven’t changed at all. The main event, the circus, takes place on a natural hillside theater, with the audience sitting on blankets amid the tall grass and grasshoppers. The circus is a series of skits, usually making political commentary on current events. This is a very liberal leaning bunch of people - although every politician comes under attack. It is pro-environment, pro-choice, pro-farmers, anti-industry, anti-Wal-Mart. It’s the Woodstock generation, in all its tie-dye, long-hair, no-bras glory.
There were a lot of people there Sunday, not as crowded as the old days, but we still ran into several people we knew. The parking was definitely better than before - no long trek through woods and fields. The skits were just as enigmatic and topical as usual: one about Wal-Mart and a great one about the expense of making bottled water.
Immediately after the circus was the pageant, which was an confusing as ever. We went into the museum, which holds puppets and stage sets from 40 years worth of performances, and the store, where Caroline bought posters for her dorm room. The weather was perfect, too - it was a great day.
Here are some photos, which only capture a sense of the beauty of Bread & Puppet.
Before the show starts, they have little sideshows. Here's one of two farmers taking time out from chores to dance with each other:
A skit by the Rotten Ideas Theater Co. about the failure of both the Democrat and Republican parties to accomplish much:
Little kids playing bulldozers to make a Wal-Mart parking lot:
This skit is about Homeland Securities' dilemma in Derby Line, Vermont, which straddles the Canadian-US border. How to check passports when half the library is in Canada and the other half in th US? In this skit, the woman is puzzled about her nationality, and the solution was to saw her in half:
Big puppets:
The creator is pretty amazing on very tall stilts:
Oh look, there's even a video of the performance the day we were there on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHNq6U55eko
And a recent New York Times article (restricted to subscribers).