Peter Schumann Virtual Tour @ Highland Center for the Arts
Channel: Jerome Lipani
Date: 2021-02-04

This film documents a significant virtual collaboration between Peter Schumann, painter, sculptor, baker, choreographer, musician and director of the Bread & Puppet Theatre with other Vermont artists in celebration of his work exhibited in three locations along the Ski and Snowshoe Art Trail, a Winter Season Outdoor Installation at Highland Center for the Arts in Greensboro, Vermont.

Featured here in grottoes created in the trees along the Open Air Gallery are Peter Schumann’s Spring 2020 4' x 8' Masonite Prints which mark the beginnings of the B&P integral Theatre/Painting/Circus season of 2020,  Insurrection + Resurrection Services.  This theme morphed from the original Pine Forest Memorial Village socially-distanced outdoor Spring performances into the Summer Insurrection + Resurrection Services Circus in a transformative series of ever-evolving pieces at Bread and Puppet which included roaming Pageants and Parades to the Museum and to the Papier-Mache Cathedral into the Fall of 2020.

Also on the Trail are a series of Schumann's painted cement cast sculptures - Lamentation Road - from where we proceed to his very recent Handouts series, four 10'x12' paintings mounted on the outside wall of the HCA.  Here a filmically transformative event occurs when Roy MacNeil's synthesis of video with his original musical interpretation of the words written on Schumann's Handouts paintings begins with his establishing the rhythm of this section by using one of the prints, the "Me" print, as a found-object instrument.  This beat becomes a song executed with his sister Mavis MacNeil & accompanied by his own violin & voice as his filmic dance to Schumann's words is sung in a movement which could be marked Allegro Spontaneo!  The sheer Joyousness of this sequence offers sharp contrast to Peter's deeply mournful & Expressionist performance of the Fiddle Rant during the earlier section depicting the Insurrection + Resurrection Services banners.

These excerpts of Schumann's work this year, which include the Masonite Prints, Bedsheet  Mitigations, Insurrection Obligations and Handouts plus Fiddle Rants all contribute to the ongoing Coronavirus emergency theme:  Insurrection-Lamentation-Resurrection. 

Full-length performance documentations by Jerome Lipani as well as clips from the 2020 B&P Season can be viewed in this Playlist:  
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCpyXonpC4fv4EBMrydmWxHnEb4j48pmO

Additional Roy MacNeil films can be viewed here:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXI2zguf4_CR2UfUn6B4B2g

For more Information, please go to the B&P website: breadandpuppet.org

For Info re: events & access at Highland Center for the Arts:  https://highlandartsvt.org/ 

The pieces on view in this film have been curated & presented by Alexis Smith,  without whose inspired organizing this collective creation would not have happened! If you know of possibilities for future venues for B&P exhibits, please contact Alexis at (802) 371 - 7239 or email: Vtpiegirlco@gmail.com

-- JL