Bread & Puppet Theater returns to Next Stage in Putney, Saturday, March 24th with a new play, The Basic Bye-bye Show, a poem on transformation, inspired by Dürer’s apocalyptic woodcuts, Brahms’ “4 Serious Songs,” and the daily news.
In The Basic Bye-bye Show a series of quiet object fantasies unfolds in black, white, and grey inside a small fabric stage printed with elementary words — “Resist,” “Bread,” “Yes,” “Sky,” “Riot,” “Byebye.” Outside, an orchestra of nonsense instruments arises, spins, and recedes. A birch forest grows. Sculpted clouds produce hands, chairs, and rain. The storm passes. The episodes that make up The Basic Byebye Show develop in abstract counterpoint to periodic handkerchief-assisted “basic byebyes” to various brutal unnecessities of our current politics.