AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR

AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR

Peter Schumann and the Bread & Puppet Theater

Directed by Robbie Leppzer • Turning Tide Films

Tuesday, September 15 at 7pm - Doors open at 6:30pm • $15.00 • Black Cherry Puppet Theater • 1115 Hollins Street Baltimore, MD 21223

Sponsored by Black Cherry Puppet Theater and Baltimore Artists Against Apartheid

AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR, a new 45-minute film directed by Vermont filmmaker Robbie Leppzer, provides an intimate look at Peter Schumann, the visionary founder of Bread & Puppet Theater, whose six decades of radical political performance have been forged from a single, searing childhood question: how do we as humans respond to the madness of war and violence? Born in Nazi Germany and shaped by the brutal reality of war he experienced as a child, Schumann channeled this trauma into one of the most iconic theater companies in the world. Bread & Puppet came of age in the Vietnam War street protests of 1960s New York, and grew into its full form with large-scale spectacles performed at their farm in Vermont.

Decades later, as atrocities unfold in Gaza in plain sight, Schumann — now 92 and still working with fierce urgency — finds his life’s central question more pressing than ever. In an age desperate for hopeful figures of cultural resistance, AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR is a testament to the radical, enduring idea that art is not a retreat from the world — it is a way of fighting for it.

Following the screening, there will be a post-screening panel discussion moderated by Valeska Populoh with artists Savannah Imani Wade and Marianne Ross.