The Bread and Puppet Museum has absolutely nothing to do with bread and everything to do with creepy, traumatizing puppets. Like the nightmarish kind. Now located in a 150-year-old barn in Glover, Vermont, this giant mask and puppet collection originally breathed its first breath in New York City during the 1960s. German immigrant Peter Schumann’s Bread and Puppet Theater toured college campuses across the country with politically charged shows before retiring to this quiet town near the Canadian border. Retirement isn’t the right word as this theater is still very much active, check out these pics from a recent show (really like the part where they chop off Bernie Madoff’s head).
The vast contents of the museum were created communally by Peter and his puppeteers, who applied layers of paper-mache over sculpted clay models, then used rummaged materials to create life-size figures. Today you can still watch puppets being created in the museum’s front yard next to a Quebec-style clay oven where Schumann bakes sourdough rye bread, which is free to all visitors. OKAY! That’s where the “bread” part of the name comes from. The dude likes his carbs. Unlike other museums, Schumann’s purpose is not to preserve, but let his deformed, German expressionist puppets gracefully decay. Even though the place just closed for the season, I suggest to visit it as soon as you can before it’s too late. Or if you don’t like creepy things, then stay far, far away.
