Welcome

Welcome to the blog for the Contemporary Theatremaking option on Bread and Puppet Theater for 2009.

This space is an opportunity for us to document the process of the project we are undertaking together. Documentation is a key concern for contemporary practitioners and scholars and part of your study during this course will involve reflecting upon the documentation of the company and developing documentation of your own work.


Each week group members will be allocated to the process of documentation - although you are all invited to post reports and comments. If you are unsure how to do any of these things, you can email me (matthew.cohen@rhul.ac.uk) and we'll try to talk you through it. You will receive feedback on your documentation work.

By the end of the course we hope that this blog will be a rich account of the ideas and images we have explored during the term which should prove very useful to you as you write your reflective essays.

Readings and viewings

This course has a course pack containing readings on Bread and Puppet that you are required to purchase from the departmental office. You will also be expected to view a number of videos.


Before the first class please view a generous selection (at least 30 minutes) of Bread and Puppet videos on youtube (http://www.youtube.com) as well as do the assigned readings in the course pack (only about 12 pages).

You are also encouraged to view Biting the Hand that Leads Us, an online video about theatre companies (primarily American) that use performance for political impact, including a three minute excerpt from the documentary Bread and Puppet Theatre: A Song for Nicaragua. See http://www.archive.org/details/ddtv_17_biting_the_hand_that_leads_us. The Bread and Puppet segment is at 47.42 -50.55.