Bread and Puppet Theater

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For more than fifty years, Bread and Puppet Theater has not only served its unique brand of satirical political criticism and theatrical activism with fresh-made sourdough rye and aioli; it’s also been the inspiration for a number of likeminded troupes, including our own Paperhand Puppet Intervention. That’s why the thirty-strong troupe and band is making a one-night pit-stop here during its Southern tour, staging its current show, The Grasshopper Rebellion Circus, at Paperhand’s studio in Saxapahaw. As predicted, the Trump administration has given Bread and Puppet no shortage of subject matter, but the company also takes time to commemorate historical and less-known modern struggles, from the Battle of Sempach, where an outnumbered Swiss peasant resistance defeated the Austrian Army in the fourteenth century, to the Indian saleswomen who unionized and won the right to sit down during a twelve-hour workday this year. The troupe’s other targets include the U.S.’s proposed Space Force, consumerism and the middle class, the endangered Antarctic ice shelf, and the Supreme Court, which features in a mid-show rap battle. —Byron Woods