I had my first taste of Bread and Puppet Theatre as a graduate student under the incomparable tutelage of Emerson College’s John Bell- a world-renowned expert in the puppetry field.  Bell infused each lecture with biting political commentary- and completely expanded my understanding of what puppetry could be and how it could be used to reach its audience.  Gone were my innocent days of seeing puppets only for their comic and educational children’s values.  Muppets and marionettes were pushed aside to make room for a wider range of puppetry experiences.  As a class assignment, I had the opportunity to volunteer for Bread and Puppet’s 2005 visit to Boston.  I was blown away by their dedication and passion.  When I heard they were returning this year to perform Tear Open The Door of Heaven, a “a pink and blue puppet show about Heaven and its effects on the Underneath,” at the Boston Center for the Arts, I was enthusiastic about attending and sharing a very unique experience with my fellow audience members.

Upon entering the Cyclorama at the B.C.A., my companion and I were greeted by the resplendent musical stylings of the Second Line Social Aid Pleasure Society Brass Band (with none of than John Bell himself on the trombone).  The audience was alive with laughter and some of them joined the Company in jubilant dancing in the playing space.  Bread and Puppet Theatre always includes a faction of volunteers from the city they are visiting, which provides two things: a guaranteed audience of friends and family, and an enthusiastic group of performers bringing good energy to the space.  Boston’s volunteers were both enthusiastic and energetic, and also had a comforting sense of familiarity about them- these are people you know, your neighbors, friends, coworkers- I even saw my old next-door neighbor in the crew!  After the music and dance, attention shifted quickly to Peter Schumann, the company’s founder, offering a thought-provoking introduction complete with scenery and props.

Tear Open The Door of Heaven is performed in six separate scenes with six dance interludes in between.  The six vignettes show a hypothetical heaven ruled by a God, his daughter, and his stepdaughter and their interaction with the earth.  The scenes range from Heaven, to a Presidential office, to a mountaintop.  The puppetry work is nothing short of masterful.  Each step is nuanced from the tilt of the head to the rotation of a heel, to create the most impact for the audience, and despite such a dedication intimate detail, the show still maintains a very organic and free-form feeling. In one touching scene, a banner of names is unfurled.  We are told that each name written represents one of the child victims of the previous year’s fighting in the Gaza strip as a group of larger-than-life puppet dancers performed an absolutely heartbreaking and beautiful tribute.

There is no question that a casual observer might find this production to be ridiculous.  People twirling and leaping around in oversized masks and yards of fabric accompanied by a cow bell and fiddle isn’t the most coherent way to express an opinion or idea- but I can say without an ounce of acrimony that it works.  I have never had a more lively political discussion with my companion than we shared after this production.  Whether the argument is that the puppetry has nothing to do with politics, or the puppetry has everything to do with politics, the open channel for discourse on the topic is clear.  You absolutely feel the need to have a dialog at the end of the production.

For the puppetry connoisseur who finds political satire hard to swallow, Bread and Puppet Theatre also performs a family-friendly show during the afternoon in their “ports of call.”  These shows celebrate puppetry in the more classic sense with messages about friendship, the environment, and working together in ways that are more palatable for a younger crowd.

A pillow made from names.

“Are there going to be hula hoops?”

That was my companion’s hopeful, sotto voce inquiry as we were politely shuffled into the Loeb Drama Center on Wednesday evening.  I was pleased to tell him that I wasn’t sure what this production of Aurélia’s Oratorio had in store for us, but I knew it was going to be one of a kind.  I was devastated when I missed the first visit of Aurélia Thierrée and Jaime Martinez, the dramatic duo that breathed life into this piece earlier in the season, so when I heard that the drama-come-dance-production-come-circus-act was returning to the A.R.T., I was very pleased.

We didn’t see any hula hoops, but the variety and complexity of fantastical acrobatics was so impressive, believe me, you hardly missed them.  Conceptualized by Thierrée, along with her mother, Victoria Thierrée Chaplin, youngest daughter of famed actor-magician Charlie Chaplin, Aurélia’s Oratorio went beyond the world of reality into a fantastic world where nothing is as it seems.  With hardly a word spoken throughout, the movements and unique musical arrangements (Chaplin teamed up with Paolo Barucchi for the sound design, it was brilliant) told a complex story that was different for each audience member, but left everyone utterly speechless.  There are a fantastic variety of topics I could cover throughout the production- from the acrobatic work (wow!), to the beautiful dancing and costumes, but I am going to focus on what I found to be the most mesmerizing aspect of the production, the puppetry work.

Perhaps you might not know that I specialized in puppetry while doing my master’s degree work at Emerson, but since my very first class there (hoping to quell a life-long unreasonable fear of marionettes) I was hooked on the variety and intricacies in the world of puppetry.  Aurélia’s Oratorio used several facets of the puppetry world- shadow show, large scale-multiple operated puppets, Punch and Judy style hand puppets, and even “found object puppetry”.  Curtains, coats, scarves, and bells all took on human forms and transformed the audience’s view more magically than a cast of humans ever could.  Even the curtains themselves became puppets in an intricate mating dance that produced an adorable “baby curtain” later in the production (I’m not kidding, a few audience members even said, “awww”.) A stand-out puppetry scene was done as a dream sequence where layers of fabric, cardboard, glitter and gauze created a dream world where Aurélia was simultaneously frightened and comforted into sleep.  The puppetry work was seamless- each puppeteer was fully hidden and completely invested.  It felt exciting and at the same time eerie and surreal to see these huge creations of fabric come to life and interact with the characters on stage.

Another brilliant and exciting bit of puppetry work came later in the show, when Aurélia was kidnapped and attacked by an obsessed flock of hand puppets.  The puppeteers were really at their best here, totally obscured and yet able to portray an ominous evil that was truly unnerving (and made me doubt if I really was over my puppet phobia!)

The production, which runs for another week and a half, is appropriate for all ages, but don’t let that sway you into thinking it is a kid’s show.  The multi-layering of the piece makes it even more appropriate for adults, and I recommend it for any family looking for a way to dodge the ominous humidity that has been creeping over Beantown, of late.

This show is a great end cap for a fantastic season at the A.R.T.  Fall brings The Donkey Show, the kick off to a season of Shakespeare- I’m really looking forward to it!

Shadow Puppet Dream Sequence