On Wednesday March 7th, Elka and Peter Schumann will give a Lamoille Valley Osher Lifelong Living Institute lecture entitled “ Bread and Puppet Overview with ‘Fiddle Lecture'." Peter Schumann, born in Silesia (then Germany), founded the Theater in 1961 in New York City and worked in it as an artist, a performer, the bread-baker and the director. He has said “Theater is a form of religion. Puppets and masks should be played in the street. They scream and dance and display life in its clearest terms. Puppet theater is of action rather than dialog.” Elka Leigh Scott was born in 1935 in Magnitagorsk, U.S.S.R. and moved to the U.S. in 1941. They married in 1951. Elka is the Director of the Bread and Puppet (B&P) Museum and the B&P Press. In 1970 B&P moved to Goddard College in Vermont and in1974 moved to a farm in Glover in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. The B&P Theater continues to build, perform, tour and hold residencies and internships.

For the Osher presentation Elka will first give a brief overview of B&P’s fifty plus year history of creating and performing puppet shows, circuses and pageants and of participating in parades and demonstrations with giant puppets. Peter will then perform a “Fiddle Lecture” called “Post-Apocalypse for ¾ Empire” based upon Albrecht Durer’s furious wood-cut series “Apocalypse”. This was possibly inspired by the Church’s and the aristocracy’s brutal oppression of the peasant uprisings of his time. Inspired by the latest election in the U.S., Peter carved 25 cuts into masonite based on the Apocalypse, which B&P Theater performed cantastoria –style (a show with pictures and spoken or sung word).

Although this presentation was the last listed in our schedule for the winter, we have rescheduled Linda Bryant speaking on Bridging the Digital Divide to March 14. This lecture, sponsored by the Stowe Free Library, is free of charge. It was originally scheduled for February 07 and had to be cancelled due to the weather. We have also rescheduled a presentation by Dartmouth Professor Randall Balmer on Martin Luther and Religion in America for March 21st.

Osher (OLLI) programs take place at the Town and Country Resort, 876 Mountain Road, Stowe. Doors open at 1:00 pm and lectures begin at 1:30 sharp. Refreshments will follow the presentation. There is a $5.00 fee for non-members. To determine if there is to be a cancellation due to the weather call Town and Country Resort, 253-7595.