Peter Schumann, flag runners and the band playing "When the Saints Go Marching In," bring another circus to a close. Photos and paintings by Joseph Gresser
NEW YORK, New York — Peter Schumann looked up at the hazy Manhattan sky.
“Where will the sun set?” he asked.
It wasn’t an idle question from the director of the Bread and Puppet Theater. The plaza at Lincoln Center was almost unbearable in the sunlight that blasted the open space between the center’s three main buildings.
At 2 p.m. there was no shade for performers, and the thousand or so folding chairs set up in front of the stage were also baking in full sunlight.
The sun was headed toward the Hudson River behind the Metropolitan Opera House. There would be shade for the audience, but there would
The Metropolitan Opera House offers welcome shade to Bread and Puppet’s audience.
be no relief for performers, especially those of us in the band. We’d be out in the full sun from the beginning of rehearsals to the end of the show.
I drove down to New York on the day of the show, Wednesday, August 8, to play saxophone in the circus band. My trip was a nostalgic journey. I made a similar journey the last time Bread and Puppet performed at Lincoln Center, 17 years ago.
“Hot town, summer in the city.” The old Lovin’ Spoonful song ran through my mind as I passed Co-op City in the Bronx, headed toward Manhattan. The cheerful refrain acknowledged the reality of New York weather, and it made it seem almost romantic.
The trip down from Vermont was speedy, and I looked forward to arriving at Lincoln Center in plenty of time to find a parking place before rehearsal.
It wasn’t a huge surprise when, just as I hit the Cross Bronx Expressway, I found myself mired in a traffic jam worthy of the world’s greatest city. The expressway is a narrow passage through rock and neighborhoods slowly recovering from urban blight and the presence of the highway. Even a fender bender or breakdown can snarl traffic for miles.
Giant washerwomen don’t get to New York often, but they adjust well to city life.
This jam was more serious than most, extending all the way to the George Washington Bridge. As I waited I began to realize that my rosy assumptions were not going to play out.
Without a breeze coming through the car’s window, I began to realize just how hot it was. My right arm rested in a slick of sweat on the center console, and it kept trying to slide off.
I was yet to realize that I had stumbled into a day of what some were calling biblical weather in New York. Earlier in the day a storm dumped three inches of water on the city and knocked most of the subway system out. One or two tornadoes struck Brooklyn, and now the sun was doing its best to melt what remained.
Just before the bridge, I turned off onto the parkway running alongside the Hudson River. Traffic was moving freely, and in no time I was headed into the underground parking garage at Lincoln Center. The rate sign, like those at all New York garages, was unintelligible, but I knew there would be suffering at pay-up time.
I found a spot, grabbed my horn, and ran upstairs to melt on the cookie sheet that was the plaza.
I saw a group of tall blackbirds with cardboard heads and wings rocking slowly on their stilts as Peter Schumann gave them directions. Nearby, yellow-shirted Lincoln Center staff members set up rows of seats.
Other techies on stage tested the sound system. As visitors to the theater’s Glover farm know, Bread and Puppet doesn’t usually perform its circuses on stages or to audiences respectably seated in chairs, but Lincoln Center has its way of doing things.
In 1990 the theater was invited to perform a show called Theatrum Mundi, the theater of the world. In those days I was a watercolor
Giant puppets parade through the crowd at Bread and Puppet’s 1990 Lincoln Center show. Painting by Joseph Gresser
painter who had chosen Bread and Puppet as a subject because it moved slowly and I didn’t have to pay my models. I followed the show down to the city to catch the big puppets among bigger buildings.
The booking was for two days, and the weather both days was only so-so with an intermittent light drizzle. On the first day the show suffered a bit from the distance created between audience and performers by the stage. It was received respectfully but not enthusiastically.
On the morning of the second day, the company arrived at Lincoln Center and was greeted by the producers who announced that, due to the weather, the show would have to be canceled.
Peter Schumann and company members protested that the weather was no different than that of the day before. The Lincoln Center people were unyielding.
The sound system would not survive the rain, they said. No problem, the puppeteers replied, we never wanted it.
The rain would make the stage dangerously slippery, they said. Company members said they preferred to perform on the ground. Puppeteer John Bell ran around in circles on the damp plaza to demonstrate the surface’s great traction.
Meanwhile, while techies were taking away the sound equipment, audience members were arriving.
Peter Schumann plays a circus fanfare.
Peter Schumann eyed the gathering crowd. The Lincoln Center people eyed Peter uneasily. They were beginning to wonder what he might say to the disappointed audience. A producer went in search of a telephone.
Several minutes later she reappeared to say that the New York City Parks Department had given permission for Bread and Puppet to do its show in the vest-pocket park across the street from Lincoln Center. The only condition, she said, was that the company not leave any of its puppets behind when it left.
Peter told the audience of the new situation and said the show would begin when all the puppets had been carried across the street. Crowd members rushed forward, grabbed hold of the theater’s big traveling boxes, and carried them into the park.
The place was jammed, sight lines were nonexistent, and the puppeteers barely had space to move, let alone to push through the crowd in the procession that ended the show. It was a triumph.
A cool drizzle would have been welcome this year. Instead of rain, rivulets of sweat ran down my forehead stinging my eyes.
The run through went smoothly — most of the acts had been running in Vermont for several weeks. Spacing decisions and traffic flow between acts took up most of the time.
After rehearsal we sat in the sun as Peter talked. Several cases of bottled water were sucked up in a flash, and the theater’s big water
One of Bread and Puppet’s crack garbage men checks out the scene at Lincoln Center with Peter Schumann.
jugs were hit hard as well.
Despite calamitous weather and uncertain public transportation, people began to flow into the plaza. A big article in the New York Times seemed to be good for business. Here and there in the crowd we recognized old friends.
One woman approached Peter and reminded him that she worked with the company in its early days in New York. By showtime all the seats were filled, and hundreds of standees milled about.
Just after 6 p.m. Peter Schumann stepped forward and lifted his twin trumpets to his lips and blew a fanfare. Two columns of stilted birds, one black and one white, each with its own percussion orchestra, emerged from opposite sites of the stage and paraded gracefully around the audience. The show was on.
For a performer, a show is like a fast river. Once you’re in it you are carried along on the current and you have to rely on preparation and luck to carry you through. You can run onto the rocks.
Puppets perform against the backdrop of the New York State Theater.
On that hot day the gods of papier-mâché were with us, as was the audience.
They laughed when Mr. Everything-is-fine and his lovely assistant Mr. Shut-up-and-do-what-I say conjured up a horde of devils with their paradise-making machine. They cheered at the demonstration of how to overthrow the government through laughter. And they were with us during the quieter acts as well.
In the traditional finale Peter emerged on his ten-foot stilts while flag runners danced behind him. The crowd cheered for a while and then stood up. All of a sudden they were no longer an audience but a large group of people all trying to figure out the best way to get home on a hot day.
The puppeteers were, for the moment, no longer performers but baggage handlers, packing up puppets and reloading the bus for the trip home.
Once the show was over I started to feel the effects of the heat. Taking advantage of my status as hanger-on, I packed up my horn and headed for my car with my son Mischa, who lives in New York. On the way to his place I began to feel really bad, but eventually a big bottle of Gatorade set me straight.
Late Wednesday night I was back in my car headed north. As I drove I recalled the end of the 1990 Lincoln Center trip.
After the show in the park the company packed up and headed downtown. There puppeteers and friends took over an Indian restaurant and feasted for hours, laughing and telling stories. I rolled out of the restaurant late and started
A parade through the audience at the end of a 1990 performance of Theatrum Mundi at New York's Lincoln Center.
back to Vermont.
And there the two trips merged in my mind as I approached the Kingdom at dawn. Once again I was a tired driver with a sleepy head full of puppet dreams.
