May Day in NYC-- from Rude Mechanical Orchestra to Bread & Puppet

http://youtu.be/n6_iY69P2jU
at the end of this tape are shots of the Bread and Puppet boat.


When i first saw Peter Schumann at Union Square on May Day, he was all alone with some small plastic bag rolls and some splintery sticks and the banged up fatso head and it looked so desolate. I thought, wow it has happened-- the new world is here--all the sparkly new OWS creativity,etc and Bread and Puppet is, well, just a bunch of sticks and paper--- UNTIL-- an hour later, I was astounded to see the theater's resurrection boat come around the bend at Union Square.

What a super glorious site-specific totally brilliant work!   Bread and Puppet's use of interactive, visual spectacle scattered the  Occupy bits and pieces, crepe paper flowers, and plastic chains like confetti!

This is what political art can be! Fantastic dancing sail, simple blue band of prescient images of climate changed drowning victims, all those lovely hopeful faces of the marchers inside the boat, gathering more as they sailed down Broadway, a band of defiant Noahs, sailing to glory.

And behind marched Uncle Fatso, in his pathetic pursuit of the revolutionary sailors.

still fotos by Solveig Schumann

As Grace Paley said about Bread and Puppet, "AH!".

Amen.