Bread and Puppet Theater. Bread and Puppet Newspaper Nos 2, 4, 5.

32 Little Pages of News

Bread and Puppet Theater. Bread and Puppet Newspaper Nos 2, 4, 5. New York: Bread and Puppet Press. December 1966 – January 1967.

Three volumes, small 8vo. Mimeographed wrappers and text, wire stitched as issued, printed on blue, cream and pink paper; all vols pp. 32, with black and white illustrations to each page; very slight toning to edges of all volumes, otherwise sharp and bright; Fine.

A rare gathering of three early mimeographed issues of the Bread and Puppet Newspaper, produced by the New York countercultural theatre group, Bread and Puppet, in protest against the Vietnam War.

The Bread and Puppet Theatre was founded in New York by Peter Schumann in 1963. Their early productions addressed local concerns in the Lower East Side, such as rent rates and rats. By the mid-1960s, as American involvement in Vietnam escalated, their attention turned towards anti-war activism. They arranged street pageants, shows, and protests, but they also produced printed materials, such as these pamphlets, which criticised US involvement in Vietnam.

Newspaper workshops took place once a week, ‘so that the news could be understood’. Each thirty-two-page issue sought to distil ‘all the news that’s fit to print’, ‘all the good news’, and ‘almost all the bad news’, guided by the principle that ‘everything that can be said on 32 little pages has to be said on 32 little pages’ (This is the Bread and Puppet Museum, c. 1968). These early newspapers are concerned with the Vietnam War. They criticise Henry Cabot Lodge, the bombing of Vietnam, and the destruction of Bến Súc.

OCLC finds twelve copies, all of which in the US; not on Library Hub.

SKU: 2126183