The familiar placid atmosphere on the Green, conducive to studying and Frisbee, was interrupted yesterday by crashing symbols, loud singing and a multi-colored school bus, as the famous Bread and Puppet Theater company came roaring into Hanover.
The avant-garde group from Vermont put on their traditional brand of bizarre yet folksy theater as a large crowd assembled to watch yesterday afternoon. The production portrayed a motley crew of characters by using generous portions of homemade color and flash. Some of the sights and sounds included massive puppets controlled by multiple puppeteers, strange paper mache masks and a ragtime band led by a bearded trumpeter clad in striped pants and a top hat.
Reactions to the spectacle varied from the wild enthusiasm of those in the front row to the bewilderment of passers-by.
Students from theater professor Annabelle Winograd's course on avant-garde theater took part in the evening performance and the revelry of the day was captured on video by students in film professor Jeffrey Ruoff's class on documentary filmmaking for a piece to be completed later next month.
Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on the Lower East Side of New York, the troupe has been spinning homespun yarns for over 40 years. Bread and Puppet first rose to prominence in the 1960s when it staged processions taking up whole city blocks in protest of the Vietnam War.
The group relocated to the country permanently in 1970, when the troupe moved to Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., acting as the college's theater-in-residence. It was at this point that Bread and Puppet established its practices of baking bread and living off the land as much as possible.
Bread and Puppet settled into a farm with a 140-year-old barn in Glover, Vt., where it resides to this day. Since then, hundreds have turned out to watch and perform in the group's Domestic Resurrection Circus, which was held annually through 1998.
