It was a hot and dusty weekend for Bread & Puppet outside Glover in northern VT. The theme for the Aug 9th and 10th events was Maximum Security Democracy. The temperature soared into the mid eighties as fans sweltered under a hazy sky. There were not as many people this time, but you could always tell it was a diehard crowd as people stood up to cheer the entrance of the puppeteers.

This year's skits included a dance of cookbooks, rocks on Mars complete with dancing bears..Ethyl, Butyl and Butane. Eschewing NASA's triumphs, the space agency was introduced as being the organization that brought us Apollo 13, Challenger and Skylab. "We've got the right stuff," declared a spokesman, following the announcement that 73 lbs. of plutonium fuel, purchased on the black market from a Russian, would be used to power the next space venture around Venus and Saturn. But, of course, things went wrong. The vehicle exploded, showering radioactive particles everywhere, and forcing an evacuation of Earth!

As on previous occasions the internet got some attention. "The post office is now in disgrace because E-Mail is setting the pace!" announced the puppet master. A race ensued to see how fast it really takes a letter to reach its destination. While "a postal moose" was kicked and cajoled across the arena, internet mail suffered the ignominious fate of a "system error" and had to be "rebooted!"

Everyone seem to like the skit on attempts by federal drug enforcement officials to train a group of dogs at sniffing out drugs. In a training exercise for a so-called "elite security unit", the"unfortunate dogs" were ordered to find the illicit drugs in the case of a DEA officials, but instead the "dogs" ran into the crowd and had to be dragged out again by puppet field police.

The performance seemed to lack the usual number of large puppets except for a character called McGoliath. Naturally, this "macdonalds-like character" was depicted unsympathetically in the recent court case in Britain between a penniless postman and Macdonald's International. "There once was a terrible giant who turned the world into his client," declared the puppet master. "With 99 trillion served," it had become a mighty corporation, not to be trifled with.

The underlying theme at Bread & Puppet is always something to do with democracy gone awry. Usually, organizers focus on a particular case to bring before the audience. If you had taken refuge from the heat in the pine forest behind the outdoor amphitheate you would have learned about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black freelance journalist, who is on Pennyslvania's death row for the shooting death of a policeman in Philadedphia in December 1981. Mumia's story was also depicted in a passion play following the Circus.

There are always lots of side shows at Bread & Puppet and they are usually critical of government authority. The political cognescenti would have loved the puppeteer commentary on Ruby Ridge, with white supremists depicated as a group of Shoes.

Federal agents prepare an assault on a group of "Shoes" at Ruby Ridge. in 1991.

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