{"id":355293,"date":"2026-09-24T02:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T02:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355293\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T02:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T02:34:07","slug":"political-bread-puppet-theater-draws-crowds-to-old-stone-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355293\/","title":{"rendered":"Political Bread & Puppet Theater draws crowds to Old Stone House"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the adult themes, colorful and cartoonish characters made the show entertaining for everyone. However, in some instances (for example, a puppet of a Wall Street trader being walked like a dog and throwing chunky fabric poop around), it was clear that parents were second-guessing their choice of entertainment for the evening.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The show keeps up with modern attention spans while still being low-tech.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA phone-brained audience is not so different from a vaudeville audience,\u201d tour booker Paul Bedard told the Brooklyn Eagle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the 20s there have been variety shows where we say, make it too short to suck \u2026 it\u2019s got to be a spectacle in some way,\u201d Bedard said. \u201cOur show is serious and silly. And we try to take both of those aspects seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

To keep the audience engaged, Bread & Puppet Theater swung from the serious to the sublime.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A more serious, touching segment had performers reading out letters from children in immigration detention centers. A lighthearted skit featured a drag, and delightfully camp, version of Sam Altman being tossed around by world powers and escaping petulantly on a rocket to Mars.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Only 15 Bread & Puppet Theater performers are touring the country, but as they stop along their route, those who have apprenticed with them are invited to join.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Guest<\/a>Guest performers Assata Gonzalez and Salem Pavon. Photo: Agatha Scaggiante\/Brooklyn Eagle<\/p>\n

\u201cThe puppeteers live all over the world, but many of them happen to live in New York,\u201d Bedard said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the Old Stone House, the packed ensemble on stage was closer to 30.<\/p>\n

New Yorkers Assata Gonzalez and her son, Salem Pavon, age 7, both performed in the afternoon and evening shows at the Old Stone House, but they aren\u2019t joining the troupe on tour. Assata played a dancing horse, while Salem, easily the youngest performer of the night, was an impressively agile stiltwalker.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Assata apprenticed with Bread & Puppet Theater last September and spent the summer volunteering with them along with her family. She said the experience was great for Salem, who learned instruments like the accordion and skills like stiltwalking, which he now loves to practice at home in Staten Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the best age to start stilting because you\u2019re not afraid of anything, and you\u2019re not afraid to be that tall,\u201d Assata said. \u201cYou can do beautiful and dangerous things without thinking about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Bread & Puppets Theater has a formula that doesn\u2019t change: a brass band, handmade banners and costumes, affordable art for sale and on view, and fresh bread and aioli served to the audience at the end. Still, each year the topics must shift to reflect world events, meaning new costumes, new skills and new performers are always in the mix.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe create a new circus every year, and the format of the circus is always the same,\u201d Bedard said. \u201cBut the content of it changes every year to respond to the moment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bread & Puppets Theater will next visit New York in December at Theater for the New City in the East Village.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite the adult themes, colorful and cartoonish characters made the show entertaining for everyone. However, in some instances…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,30065,3365,2301,9,24,63,87483,87,130399],"class_list":["post-355293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-capitalism","tag-economy","tag-immigration","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-old-stone-house","tag-politics","tag-puppetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}