AN ARTIST RESPONDS TO WAR

About the film

A vibrant portrait of 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 91 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.