For Immediate Release: October 10, 2019
Contact: Susan Strano, Marketing Director
sstrano@benningtonmuseum.org
802-447-1571
Bread and Puppet presents Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis
On Sunday, November 3 at 3:00 pm, Bennington Museum presents Bread and Puppet Theater’s Diagonal Life: Theory and Praxis, a show that examines the current precariously diagonal condition –on the verge of collapse, yet always capable of uprising. Held in the Ada Paresky Education Center, this free event is made possible by the generous support of Alison Nowak and Robert Cane through the Music at the Museum series. Due to limited seating, reservations are required. Go to breadandpuppet-bennmuse.eventbrite.com to reserve and print your ticket or call 802-447-1571 ext. 203.
“The vertical is the exceptional human predicament, the up and forward striding ambition that manufactures history and warfare”, says Peter Schumann, Bread and Puppet’s founder and director. “The diagonal results from the hurts that the verticals suffers in the process. It is our common human fate, the hard to sustain in-between-life, neither up nor down.”
Living in the modern world of Western civilizations, we are no strangers to verticality. From the architecture of our cities, to the “ladder(s) of success” we are asked to scale upward during our waking hours, postponing the horizontal pleasures to a time of sleep. Bread and Puppet’s Diagonal Life presents the diagonal as a potent and promising opposition to the dominating verticality of our culture.
Puppeteers long ago realized that the most aesthetically radical movements for puppets are diagonals, because these movements cannot be sustained by human actors or dancers for more than a moment. Diagonal Life brings all the bewildering, beguiling, and downright funny possibilities and implications of diagonality to life with song, dance, magic, mechanism, and stunning cardboard and paper maché puppets painted in Peter Schumann’s exuberant, slapdash expressionist style.
After the show, Bread and Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread and Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread and Puppet Press – will be for sale.
Bread and Puppet Theater
An internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick, its shows are political and spectacular, with huge puppets made of paper maché and cardboard. Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side, the theater has been based in the North East Kingdom of Vermont since the early 1970s.
About the Museum
Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main Street (Route 9), Bennington, in The Shires of Vermont. The Museum is open 10 am to 5 pm daily June through October. It is wheelchair accessible. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students over 18. Admission is never charged for younger students, museum members, those presenting an EBT card or to visit the museum shop. Visit the museum’s website www.benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571 for more information.
Bennington Museum is a member of ArtCountry, a consortium of notable art and performance destinations in the scenic northern Berkshires of Massachusetts and southern Green Mountains of Vermont, including The Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art , Williamstown Theatre Festival (20 minutes away); and MASS MoCA (25minutes away). Visit ArtCountry.org for more information on these five great cultural centers.