Sweet Briar College
Media, Marketing and Communications Office
P.O. Box 1056
Sweet Briar, VA 24595
{P} 434.381.6262
{F} 434.381.6263
The Sweet Briar Promise outlines our distinctive approach for providing meaningful, enduring education for women. It includes:
On Sunday, Oct. 25, the hills of Sweet Briar College will be alive with the sounds of Bread and Puppet Theater’s distinctive and controversial music.
Chefs feature prominently in Bread and Puppet Theater’s “The Sourdough Philosophy Circus.” Photo by Jack Sumberg.The company will present its outdoor show, “The Sourdough Philosophy Circus,” at 4 p.m. in the upper Quad. The program combines dance, a brass band, puppets and masks, local volunteer performers and sharp political commentary.
Tickets go on sale Oct. 20 and are $10 for adults, $7 for seniors, $5 for students and free for children younger than 12. For tickets, call (434) 381-6120 or e-mail boxoffice@sbc.edu. In case of rain, the performance will move to Murchison Lane Auditorium in Babcock Fine Arts Center.
The Vermont-based, non-profit Bread and Puppet is one of the country’s oldest activist street theater companies, playing to audiences around the world since 1962. The company’s trademark is its imaginative blending of art forms – dance, puppetry and music – to create an original theatrical experience and deliver the company’s underlying message of universal peace.
Political and social commentary and slapstick comedy have always been key components in Bread and Puppet’s innovative shows. The company’s first performances in New York centered on issues such as “rats, rents, police and other problems” in founder Peter Schumann’s East Side neighborhood, according to breadandpuppet.org. During the Vietnam War, the group staged “block-long processions and pageants involving hundreds of people.”
A Bread and Puppet description of “The Sourdough Philosophy Circus” says it is “about the need for human fermentation.”
It goes on to explain, “Human fermentation concerns those parts of the human body that are not governed by the government, like the guts and the gutsy parts of the brain. This also applies to zebras and city-bred cows, dancing bears and independent donkeys.
“The show is run by a bunch of cooks, specialists in cooking the various stews and pancakes of our everyday first-world existence. Additional commentary is provided by the Rotten Idea Theater Company. Music is by the Sourdough Philosophy Brass Band and a quartet of sheep.”
