I came to Burlington, Vermont without a plan, knowing only that it’s the closest Greyhound station to rural Glover, VT where the Bread and Puppet Theater has its home. At the last minute, realizing (hindsight 20/20) that I did not have anywhere to stay in Burlington and about four hours before nightfall to figure out a place to stay, I put out a far flung request to the ten or so Couchsurfing users on the site in that city. Kevin, in Montreal, had also told me that if I needed contacts there that he had a few friends there who would be open to letting me crash for a night. I set up at a Starbucks (unfortunately corporate, but the best long term wifi camp site around) and waited to hear back from these messages and texts that had been scattered to the Vermont winds. Kevin’s friend-of-a-friend contact was out of town, but gave me her roommate’s number and told me what neighborhood they lived in and I decided that without a better plan by 6:30 PM I would at least head in that direction and wait for her to get off work at 9:00 to find out whether it was set in stone.
That wandering sent me up to Church Street, an iconic area of Burlington where the brick streets are open to pedestrians only and lined with boutique-y shops, craft beer and coffee, and (I believe) the first Ben & Jerry’s location. On a summer night, that means hundreds of Vermonters arrayed in a kind of 21st century hip-consumer Norman Rockwell painting stretching back to the large and picturesque church that the street is presumably named for. But since Vermont is pretty laid back, it’s a Unitarian church. As I walked around thinking about what to do and reflecting on all of the great hospitality I’d experienced so far, I realized I could probably sleep in that church basement if nothing else came through since there were a few cars parked outside. I decided, though, that would be a last resort since I didn’t bring my sleeping bag on this leg of the trip in a last minute packing error. So I kept walking north past the church and off of Church Street and toward the neighborhood I was still hoping to crash in. My phone buzzed—a notification from Couchsurfing that Martin was willing to host me at the last minute.
While I wasn’t worried about finding a plan, since I have a lot of trust that things come together one way or another, I still almost cried when Martin called me to say that he’d come pick me up and take me to his place. The hospitality of random strangers that I’d been able to experience so far on the trip had already piled high into a sizable stack of proof that people are largely good, and this was just one more example. As I walked back down the street to meet him, a group of street kids were at a folding table covered in zines and small art pieces with a sign that said “Art is Here”. I was going to just walk past, since I didn’t have any money to buy art nor room to store it, but as I passed the woman there, she said “Hey! Come back and talk to me!”. I talked to her and the other few people she was with about their travels and checked out their prints, some of which I liked a lot. When she saw me admiring one specifically, she said I should get it and when I told her I was broke and traveling, she smiled and handed it over. I realized as I kept walking that these were people who would have helped me, too, had I not received the other offer. The universe was abundant.
I had also been in tenuous contact with Danny, a contact from Craigslist rideshare, who was my best bet to get to Glover the next day. There is no public transportation in that area and while Vermont is probably among the safest places to hitchhike, it wasn’t my top plan for reaching Bread & Puppet, and so I ended up sifting through carefully disguised cab ads in Craigslist for an actual person. Danny, a former radio host and ex-pastor, had a smiling photo and a tie-dye t-shirt in his ad, which tipped the scales in his favor. He had recently sold his possessions, bought a large van, and become a junker–buying and selling other people’s unwanted goods–to pass the time before moving back to Florida. He met me in a mall parking lot in Burlington and we were on our way. For the cost of gas, I got a ride to the circus and about an hour and a half of great conversation. Did I know how I would leave Glover again that night? No. But I wasn’t concerned after this barrage of good fortune.
After explaining to him what Bread and Puppet is, Danny walked in to the circus with me and stayed for the show. What I’ve been referring to as “the circus” is a two part show, the full title of which is “The Overtakelessness Circus and Pageant with Comet’s Passage Over Reality Passion Play”. Poetry readers may recognize “overtakelessness” as a reference to Emily Dickinson and her work is something of a theme in the current work at Bread and Puppet, with prints made of opening lines of some of her poems. The circus and pageant ranged from comic and cheeky to downright mournful and spanned many of the ideas in this trip including mass extinction, superstition, courage, fear, joy, uncertainty, hope. This tradition has been alive for many years at Bread and Puppet and their unique take on politics, religion, and art has inspired many artists and their ideas have been dispersed through decades of cheap art. This post has the highlights of my photos from this visit and a small portion of the truly massive museum on site.
After the pageant, which I loved for its roving format that forced the audience to follow players through the fields and forests of the farm, bread was served as it has been since the theater’s inception in keeping with the philosophy that art is food and that the two go together. Peter Schumann, baker and co-founder of the theater, was there serving it and looking rather unavailable for an interview, so I stalked around looking for others who might be able to recommend who of the many participants would offer great interviews. I asked the closest person with a donation hat and she told me I should talk to Elka Schumann, Peter’s wife and the force behind the museum and much of the company through the years. Among the hundreds of people and the many acres of space, there she was right as the suggestion was made. I walked with her and explained my project. She said she had to get to the museum to sell cheap art and that I should find her afterwards. She helpfully rattled off a short list of names of other people I should look for, so I wandered around the campus, asking people in white (signifying that they had just participated in the circus) where those first names might be found.
I found Joe first and he agreed to a short interview, which will be posted here soon, and we talked about how he ended up as a puppeteer. The story took him from Occupy Wall Street to Bread & Puppet and we discussed that journey but also the more general ideas of performance as a means for social transformation. As we talked, dinner was being prepared and served to the large crew of participants in the show and dusk was approaching. I still didn’t know where I was going to stay there and began to consider that when another visitor struck up a conversation with me. Joe had given me a list of nearby campsites, but I didn’t have a tent. It was fairly warm though and as I weighed my options for outdoor sleep, this second stranger asked if I needed a tent or a sleeping bag. He had been given both earlier in the week and didn’t need them. I accepted gladly and we found a good spot to pitch and he showed me where his car was parked so I could drop it all off again in the morning.
When I came back, I found Janelle, one of the list of names I had been sent to find. She seemed hesitant about doing an interview herself, but in true organizer fashion rounded up both Elka and Teresa, two of the people she thought would be best suited to my specific project. I went in to interview Elka inside the house and Janelle brought us each loaded plates of food. I loved talking with her. She has been part of Bread and Puppet since the beginning and her interview can be heard in part on Praxis 144. After we finished, I went back outside and saw that it had started to rain in earnest. The tent I had been lent was free for a reason and not particularly watertight. As I considered the density of the tree coverage in the area it was pitched, Janelle complained aloud from the doorway about having to drive back to New York City that night. New York, conveniently, was my next destination, and as of yet I still had no plan to get there. I offered to split the drive if I could first interview Teresa and unpitch and return the tent. She replied something to the effect of, “Are you shitting me? That’s amazing! Let’s do it!”.
So I grabbed a flashlight and headed back to the woods to take down the tent and re-roll the sleeping bag I’d borrowed. On the way, its owner was by his car and told me not to worry about it as it was already soaked by the building storm, that he’d collect it in the morning after it had a chance to dry. Back at the house, I found Teresa and we talked about how she ended up in Vermont as a young woman after hearing about it from a friend visiting her in her home of Chihuahua, Mexico. Her journey has taken her back and forth to Mexico where she has used puppetry to work with indigenous youth and embarked on other projects including a just-finished documentary film. You can hear her interview in part on Praxis 144 as well. During our interview, Janelle had found Elle, who also needed a ride to New York that night, so the three of us piled in her car and pulled away from the beautiful farm in the relentless rain. We talked the entire way there and made it to the city just after 2:00 AM.
At some point during those two days, I stopped being surprised by the way things fell into place for me. It did affirm my belief that I set out with on this trip–that people are for the most part very good, eager to help, and interesting, and that if you make yourself available, there is a strong possibility that those people will find you or that you will find them and that magical things will become possible. And in that way, it was a fitting prelude to my first visit to the land of simultaneous cynicism and possibility, New York City.
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