Bread & Puppet Theater presents "The Heart of the Matter Circus" on Cambridge Common on Saturday, Sept. 2, at 4 p.m., as part of Cambridge Arts' Summer In The City series. Admission is free. Donations welcome.
"The Heart of the Matter Circus" is a brand new show in the tradition of the iconic Bread & Puppet Circuses that began at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont in 1970. As usual, the show will draw on traditional circus tropes and familiar Bread & Puppet iconography to draw attention to the urgent issues of the day. Stilt dancers, papier-maché beasts of all sizes and a riotous brass band make a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.
The show, says Bread & Puppet co-founder Peter Schumann, is “in response to our totally unresurrected capitalist situation, not only the hundreds of thousands of unnecessarily sacrificed pandemic victims but our culture’s unwillingness to recognize Mother Earth’s revolt against our civilization. Since we earthlings do not live up to our earthling obligations, we need resurrection circuses to yell against our own stupidity.”
After the show, Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli (free), and Bread & Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press – will be for sale.