BRATTLEBORO-When Peter Schumann’s family fled Nazi Germany, he was allowed to choose one bag of personal belongings. He took with him a bag of puppets.
The puppets were Christmas presents from German puppeteers who were friends of his parents. He and his four siblings put on puppet shows by hanging a blanket between two chairs, he told filmmaker Robbie Leppzer. For the camera, Schumann used his fingers and onomatopoeia to imitate a brief confrontation between puppets.
“Like that,” he said with a chuckle.
These were the origins of the Bread and Puppet Theater, now long renowned in Vermont and beyond for its avant-garde papier-mâché puppets and socially conscious productions.
The company is the subject of Leppzer’s new documentary, An Artist Responds to War, which will screen at the Latchis Theatre at 4 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 11.
Through interviews with Schumann and other members of Bread and Puppet, the 45-minute film examines how the company has used its unusual, often uncanny artistry to protest violence, from Vietnam to the current war in Gaza.
The screening in Brattleboro is cosponsored by Windham World Affairs Council, 118 Elliot, and Southern Vermont for Palestine.
Sarah Cohen Wood, board member of Windham World Affairs Council, said the film made her “acutely aware of how art can help us confront suffering that we might otherwise turn away from.”
After the film, Leppzer will be in conversation with Palestinian human rights activist and Vermonter Mohsen Mahdawi.
“He’s just an extraordinary person and has an incredible vision of nonviolence and peace and reconciliation,” Leppzer said of Mahdawi. “I’m really happy to be collaborating with him on these presentations where he and I are engaged in a conversation about his own personal story of growing up in the West Bank and how that has transformed his life.”
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Schumann and his wife, Elka, founded the company in 1963 in New York City. In 1974, Bread and Puppet moved to a farm in Glover.
“During the Vietnam War, we did big, big productions,” Schumann said in the film. “We built the puppets bigger and bigger and just made them more visible in the streets.”
Footage from the 1960s shows the company’s early productions, which included hundreds of marchers carrying enormous puppets through New York City. There is a gator-like puppet with a long line of marchers forming its body. A towering puppet resembles a ghoulish Uncle Sam and a 14-foot-tall Jesus-like figure wears a sign that says “Vietnam.”
Decades later, Schumann and members of Bread and Puppet traveled to the West Bank in Palestine, where they conducted theater workshops and performances. Footage shows a 2007 production, “We Are in the Same Boat,” with Ashtar Theatre in Palestine. Marchers through the West Bank use rods to hold up what looks like a cross between a sail and a ghost.
In November 2023, Bread and Puppet performed in a march through Brattleboro calling for a ceasefire in Gaza. Footage from that march lingers on puppets carrying what look like smaller, dead puppets.
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Leppzer first learned of Bread and Puppet in 1984. He was making his film Harvest of Peace, about U.S. peace activists who went to Nicaragua, and fellow filmmaker DeeDee Halleck, a friend of the Schumanns, invited Leppzer to show his work in progress at Bread and Puppet. At that time, the company’s productions focused on solidarity with Central America.
“I feel personally inspired by Bread and Puppet and personally inspired by Peter Schumann,” Leppzer said. “He’s really one of America’s great artists, and he’s so prolific. He’s 92 years old and still going strong.”
Leppzer is now working on a feature-length documentary on Bread and Puppet to be released in 2027. He said the second film will feature more voices, and more from Elka Schumann, who died in 2021.
Leppzer started filming Bread and Puppet in earnest nine years ago, but one scene dates back to 2011, when he was making his film Power Struggle, about grassroots efforts to shut down Vermont Yankee.
Bread and Puppet did a skit about the aging nuclear plant, and footage from that time shows Schumann slicing bread while playfully explaining the origin behind the name.
“You know, as it says in the Bible: Man does not live on puppet shows alone, so you also have to make bread,” Schumann told the camera.
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Leppzer, of Shaftsbury, has been director of Turning Tide Films since 1985. He recently spoke about his introduction to Bread and Puppet, how the war in Gaza changed his film’s direction, and why he’s a filmmaker.
Gen Louise Mangiaratti: What do you remember about your introduction to Bread and Puppet in 1984?
Robbie Leppzer: There was huge support going on for the Sandinista Revolution that was happening in Nicaragua, and lots and lots of U.S. peace activists were going to Nicaragua then. Also, the struggles that were going on in El Salvador. So that’s when Bread and Puppet released their giant puppet about Óscar Romero, the archbishop of El Salvador, who was assassinated.
It was an incredible way to be introduced to Bread and Puppet, by being there and being part of their whole focus on Central America and the peace activism that was going on at that time, because the U.S. was basically supporting, under the Ronald Reagan administration, a whole war against Nicaragua.
I was just blown away by seeing Bread and Puppet. I had never seen them before, and to see these large puppets and the use of their giant fields as the stage for their productions, with hundreds of puppeteers involved and tens of thousands of people in the audience — it was quite an amazing moment.
I was just totally thrilled with Bread and Puppet from that time forward, and I think vowed in the back of my head: Someday, I will make a film about Bread and Puppet.
G.L.M.: How did the war in Gaza impact the filming?
R.L.: I thought I was wrapping up filming three years ago, when all hell broke loose in Israel and Gaza. Peter Schumann and the Bread and Puppet Theater started focusing their work on protesting this war and what has become a genocide.
I thought that Peter and Bread and Puppet have been doing some of their best work in these last few years, so I kept filming, and then I realized that this footage of focusing on war and particularly the genocide that’s going on in Gaza needed to get out there soon.
So I’m doing this very unusual thing as a filmmaker: to actually release a short film ahead of the longer, feature-length film. Normally, you maybe do a shorter version after the feature-length film is out there, but in this case, because of the urgency of the war and genocide issue, I’m releasing this short because it’s just so timely and it’s so relevant.
G.L.M.:That was quite the story Schumann told, about fleeing Germany with a bag of puppets.
R.L.: Yeah, totally. And Peter, at the age of 10, 11, in the refugee camp that he went to, was doing his first public puppet shows at age 11, and also learning how to bake the sourdough rye bread, the peasant bread of Europe, that he learned from his mother. He had all the elements of his life — puppets and bread — at age 11. It’s incredible.
And then, because of the experiences of him going through the war as a child, he’s dedicated his entire adult life as an artist to protest war and social injustice. It’s pretty extraordinary as an artist, having that dedication and commitment for his whole life.
G.L.M.:The puppets of Bread and Puppet Theater are so vivid and uncanny. What is your response to them?
R.L.: Peter is just a very deep artist. It’s all his visual style. It’s incredible that he has kept at it for all of these 63 years of Bread and Puppet. They’re very evocative. There’s something magical, actually, about the puppets, that they contain all of this emotion and depth.
They are imbued with these different aspects of characters that then can play out in the performances in different ways. It is really amazing and somewhat magical how these puppets often have power to convey deep emotions and meaning without words.
They definitely have a different quality than just a human actor would have. There’s something mythical about them, I would say.
G.L.M.:Bread and Puppet has traveled to the West Bank several times, and the film includes scenes from there. How did you get that footage?
R.L.: I asked if there were photographs of those visits, and so I got photographs from people in Bread and Puppet, as well as the Palestinian community theater group, to show Bread and Puppet in Palestine.
I was really happy that there were photos because we’re talking 15 to 20 years ago. As a documentary filmmaker, I’m covering this period of time, both in terms of the trips to Palestine, but also the earlier protests against the Vietnam War.
When I began all of this, I had no idea what archival footage or photos existed, so I did the interviews, not knowing whether there would be visuals to support it. And as a filmmaker, I always need visuals to support it.
There’s a video that was also shot from the Palestinian theater group Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah. Once I found that that material existed and I could include it in the film, I was very grateful.
G.L.M.:What do you hope the Brattleboro community gains from the screening and discussion?
R.L.: My main hope for the film is that it will help open up hearts to people who watch it, because it’s so easy to get overwhelmed by the imagery of war and the news reporting and the distractions from the mainstream media or from politicians, and we lose sight of the people.
In times of war, we need to hear from the artists, because the artists help us go straight to the heart of the matter, literally, and open up our hearts.
When people see Peter Schumann’s paintings and hear him talk about what motivates him to paint and to produce theater works, people are moved. When we feel moved and our hearts are open, we can actually start to feel the grief of what’s happening in terms of the war, and then feel more connected to the people of Gaza, who are under the bombs that our government, the U.S. government, is paying for and supplying to this genocide in progress.
So we, as U.S. citizens, have a role to play, and I’m hoping that my film will open people’s eyes to that, and will inspire people to become more active in a movement for peace and reconciliation.
G.L.M.:And finally, what is the most, or one of the most, significant things you learned by talking to Peter and making this film?
R.L.: I’m just blown away by Peter’s dedication, his endless creativity, his discipline as an artist to keep on producing, and how, for him, creating art is his contribution to a better world.
And that’s why I’m a filmmaker. Making documentaries is my contribution to a better world. So I look for people who inspire me, and hope that people who inspire me will inspire others.
I make my films to inspire people to become more active themselves in the world, whether that’s in a movement for grassroots social change, or making bridges across cultures, or being artists themselves to express themselves on a deeper level in the world.
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For tickets to An Artist Responds to War: Peter Schumann and the Bread & Puppet Theater and the discussion that follows, at the Latchis Theatre, 50 Main St., Brattleboro, visit latchis.com. Tickets are $20 ($15 in advance). No one will be turned away for lack of funds.
More information about the film and a trailer can be found at anartistrespondstowar.com.
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Editor’s note: Stories presented as interviews in this format are edited for clarity, readability, and space. Words not spoken by interview subjects appear in brackets, as do editorial clarifications.
Gen Louise Mangiaratti is the former arts and entertainment editor for the Brattleboro Reformer and its sister newspapers and worked in a variety of editorial roles at the Greenfield Recorder and the Daily Hampshire Gazette in Massachusetts.
This Arts item by Gen Louise Mangiaratti was written for The Commons.