Rehearsing With Gods: Photographs And Essays On The Bread & Puppet Theater

With more than thirty years of pageantry behind it, the legendary Bread & Puppet Theater is one of America's most politically potent theater companies. Its gigantic puppets and larger-than-life pageantry make Bread & Puppet an unforgettable act of pomp and circumstance -- a folk legend that is reconstructed and celebrated through the photographs and essays of Rehearsing with Gods. Photographer Ronald Simon, together with novelist and former Bread & Puppet performer, Marc Estrin, have set out to capture the theater's magnificent drama. They do so through a partnership of stunning images and philosophical essays that describe Bread & Puppet from its inception to the present. Devoted to a theater whose fans outgrew its capacity, Rehearsing with Gods explores the social appeal of Bread and Puppet from cultural insurrection to simple circus fun. The images and text fall into nine chapters: Death, Fiend, Beast, Human, World, Gift, Bread and Hope. Each explores the eerie symbolism of Bread and Puppet's theatrical effigies, as well as the theater's own, more subdued meaning.