BreadAndPuppet:THE HEART OF THE MATTER CIRCUS, PAGEANT + NEW GALLERY
Channel: Jerome Lipani
Date: 2023-08-18

The HEART OF THE MATTER CIRCUS attacks the hypocrisies of our moment in cutting satire & primal scream, while simultaneously conveying an indomitable and touching childlike humor sorely needed in counterpoint to the despair and/or denial now pervasive in our universally shared world dilemma.  The PAGEANT offers a collective moment of transformational secular breath, symbolically and ritually free of ideological political motive. Its ensemble of sky-reaching gigantic white hands shrouded in white cloth surge in the wind. 

 The Geezer Week (7/30/23) Circus and Pageant features the public opening of the New Heart of the Matter Gallery as we process from the Pageant field through woods inhabited by Peter Schumann's Bad Bedsheet Heart Of The Matter series. When we arrive at the new building we encounter multiple Heart Series' Bedsheets in Cantastoria performance by the company.
 We are brought inside the former factoryfarm barn designed to raise veal calves - none of which were slaughtered here, fortunately - to two large gallery spaces filled end to end with brilliantly intense, deeply impassioned retrospective Bedsheets as well as additional new pieces of the Heart of the Matter series, again seen and heard in simultaneous Dada performance by the company.  In fact the two immense galleries are unable to contain Peter's complete output of the Bedsheet Series of performance/exhibitions in Vermont during this 4 year period.

Peter Schumann's Cantastoria Paintings confront the tragic political/social/economic and pointedly environmental inequities of our apocalyptic age. Each is a fragment of a gigantic manifesto, yet strangely complete on its own.  As the Action suggests, the paintings are open to interpretation by each participant-viewer. Absolutely liberatory in their piercing emotionality, these paintings objectify, essentialize and challenge our constitutional Right to Free Speech. The actors improvise fragmentary Cantastorias for the public, delivering a summarily Anarchist perspective on the era of global polarization that defines our time.

Many of the Bedsheets have been produced and exhibited in Vermont galleries as well as outdoors in forests, fields, parks and festival locations by an Alexis Smith-catalyzed team prior to the start of the pandemic. Additional Bedsheet performance/exhibition documentary films can be found @ JeromeLipaniYouTube.

Cast, Band and Crew Lists for this performance will be posted as they become available.

If you can, please attend this months' Sunday performances for yourself!  For the Summer Performance schedule: breadandpuppet.org.

This piece was filmed by Jerome Lipani and Arthur Hynes, and edited by Jerome through the good offices of ORCA (OnionRiver CommunityAccess) media in Montpelier, Vermont.

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