The Bread and Puppet Theatre in Nicaragua, 1985

Abstract

Peter Schumann's Bread and Puppet Theatre was formed in New York in 1963, and gained an international reputation for its unique combination of larger-than-life puppetry and celebratory pageantry. After leaving New York in 1970, Schumann finally settled on a thirty-acre site in Vermont in 1974, but Bread and Puppet has continued to travel far afield, and in the original Theatre Quarterly. No. 19 (1975). their Californian residency for the ‘anti-bicentennial’ celebration, A Monument for Ishi. was documented, along with practical material on the making of the puppets-and the bread. While Bread and Puppet continue to perform regularly in North America and Europe, much of their recent work, however, has centered on or been performed for Latin America – including the two projects in Nicaragua described in the following feature. In the opening part, Peter Schumann discusses with Rosa Luisa Márquez the company's 1985 production – The Nativity, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Archbishop Romero – and its place in their work. John Bell then provides an introduction to a later interview describing the production of the Nicaraguan Passion Play in 1987, accompanied by the text of the play itself. Rosa Luisa Márquez, who teaches in the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico, and John Bell, who is completing his doctoral studies and teaching theatre history at Columbia University in New York, have also both been personally involved in the work of Bread and Puppet Theatre.