Bread and Puppets

The Bread and Puppet Museum, Theater, and Paper-Mache Cathedral
753 Heights Rd
Glover, Vt 05839
802-525-3031

From https://breadandpuppet.org/museum :
The Bread and Puppet Museum is a massive accumulation of the puppets, masks, paintings and graphics of the Bread and Puppet Theater, housed in a 150-year-old barn in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, 25 miles south of the Canadian border. It is one of the largest collections of some of the biggest puppets and masks in the world. It was created in 1974 when Bread and Puppet Theater moved to this former dairy farm after a residency at Goddard College, and before that close to a decade in New York City. The museum is full to the brim; its population density is an expression not only of the accumulations of time but of the urgencies which inspired the making of so much stuff: the poverty of the poor, the arrogance of the war-mongers, the despair of the victims, and maybe even stronger than that, the glory of this whole god-given world. And naturally, all this will decay in due course.

The Bread and Puppet Museum is an immersive experience, even when it’s closed. During the winter and spring months the museum is closed, but their website proclaims “…you’re welcome to come in, turn on the lights, and have a look around.” You just have to turn off the lights when you leave.

In the Fall of 2018 I finally got to take my friend April’s fall foliage trip. Because she knows me so well, she knew I’d love the Bread and Puppet Museum, and I do.

It’s a fascinating explosion of puppets, theatre, clowns, masks, sets, art, folk art, vignettes, politics, religion, history, and counterculture revolution — all within the confines of a 150-year-old, unheated barn in Vermont. It’s the kind of place where you could lost for the whole day, without even noticing time. And you could take dozens of photos, all looking progressively artistic without even trying.

So I did…