Mending the Sky: Fighting Pollution with Bread and Puppets

Abstract

On January 18, 1994, Peter Schumann, the director and originator of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, brought some of his one-hundred-year-old sourdough starter to make and break bread with the 425 Environmental Theatre (425 Huangjingjuchang)a in Taipei. The two were collaborating in the Council of Cultural Planning and Development's (CCPD) two-week workshop and performance of Mending the Sky (Bu tian),b an antipollution allegory based on Chinese creation myths. Bread and Puppet was invited specifically to help stimulate Taiwan's community theatre by introducing new methods of developing and presenting community-based productions. Founded in 1963 in New York City, Bread and Puppet has become internationally known for its outdoor performances with masked actors, enormous effigies, improvised music, choreographed movement of large numbers of people, and narratives dealing directly with political or social issues of importance to the host community. As an environmentally conscious theatre, Bread and Puppet purposefully converts junk and cast-off materials to make its props and puppets, and although the design of most of the puppets bears the distinctive mark of Schumann himself, their actual production is a cooperative effort of the participants. The troupe has toured all over the world, always performing in public places and involving local inhabitants in some part of the performance to promote its underlying message: art is not elite, but for all people-as basic and as necessary as bread. Zhong Mingde,c the director of 425, first encountered the