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Rachel Corrie was a young American woman who died at the age of twenty-three in Gaza in 2003. She was killed when an Israeli Occupation Force bulldozer ran over her while she was defending a Palestinian house from demolition. Her martyr's death, combined with the force of her descriptions of her experiences as an activist in Palestine, not only provoked response from other activists; it became material for a number of theatrical projects, among them productions by the Royal Court Theatre in London, Bread and Puppet Theatre in the US, and in a production I recently wrote and directed here in New Zealand. This thesis considers the example of Rachel Corrie's activism in Palestine and the theatrical performances it engendered in order to examine the role of theatre in and as an activist project. The theatre is an important component of the ongoing movement for social change. It assembles temporary communities and it portrays issues in ways that are both accessible and open to debate. But theatricality is just as often a key component of activist actions outside the theatre building: in street performances and demonstrations, and also in the way some activists can be seen to pursue their political objectives on a daily basis. Finally, the theatre is a material act of production which can challenge the dominant model of production and thus has the potential to be become an activist project as itself. As a result of my analyses of this material, I hope to provide a framework of understanding both for myself and others, of the likely role of theatre in and as an activist project, and this understanding will be of assistance in the cultural task of shifting beliefs in the movement for social change. The key theorists used in this thesis are Walter Benjamin and Raymond Williams.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2008. / Document formatted into pages; contains v, 117 p. Includes bibliographical references.

Bread and Puppet Theater's use of performing objects offers an aperture to contemplate complex assemblages that blur lines between the human and the nonhuman. Drawing upon cultural studies, feminist materialism, circus studies, and puppetry studies, I consider both the bread and the puppets as they intersect with various assemblages and fields of interpretation. These configurations demonstrate how the objects embody (non)human, material, and conceptual aspects. Because of this ability to exist within the meshes of binaries, performing objects are well suited to challenge and expose other binaries and hierarchies through three categories of analysis — movement, difference, and intra-action — based on Karan Barad's work on matter. In addition to the theoretical framework, I conducted ethnographic interviews and rely on my own experience as an apprentice at Bread and Puppet in 2004, considering myself as co-constitutive actant within the scope of analysis. I examine the way the theater uses sourdough bread and puppets as performing objects to create meaning, express ideology, apply tension within constructs of power, and demonstrate a model for co-dependent living between humans and objects / Doctor of Philosophy / Objects, despite their connections to daily life, which includes times of celebration and insurgency, remain overlooked as political actants. Bread and Puppet Theater, through performances, protests, and everyday living, places bread and puppetry as central to home and public live for puppeteers and performers. This dissertation asserts that bread and puppetry at Bread and Puppet Theater exemplify a co-creative relationship between people and things. This partnership creates tension in places of power, literal locations and within modes of thinking; simplifies and makes more accessible ideological messages; and evokes solidarity through performance. By considering bread in relation to Bread and Puppet Theater, we can see how bread becomes a fulcrum balancing between those with the most wealth and those with the least. Bread, as a symbol, is used to articulate demands. Its presence alone at protests suggests a list of demands regarding redistribution of wealth, fair wages, and food. As a symbol that touches the lives of all, it becomes an object that can evoke solidarity as a symbol but also as a product that is consumed and shared. Puppetry is exemplary of shared creation between people and objects. The rod puppets used at Bread and Puppet are especially suited to blurring demarcations between these two actants. Embodying this in-between space allows puppets to interrogate and blur other sets of binaries — the sacred and the profane, the religious and the secular, rich and the poor, state power and people, war and peace, and so on. This liminal, blurred space primes puppetry to challenge structures of power during political performances and protests. Ultimately this project considers how objects become central to political action and how, if thoughtfully mobilized, could operate as counter actants within times of turmoil.

Criado na cidade de Nova Iorque no início dos anos sessenta, o Bread & Puppet Theater estabeleceu-se em meio à vanguarda artística norte-americana do século XX, tornando-se célebre nas apresentações e paradas de rua em protesto contra a guerra do Vietnã. Quatro décadas de teatro mais tarde, em plena guerra no Iraque, o grupo dirigido por Peter Schumann, agora radicado em Vermont, prossegue com seu teatro de papel-maché, em protesto contra os impérios vis e injustos do mundo globalizado. Esta pesquisa compara o espetáculo Portões do Inferno, último \"Circo de Ressurreição Doméstica\" (1998), espetáculo anual apresentado a dezenas de milhares de pessoas, a O Mundo de Pernas para o Ar, uma nova versão do Circo - \"Circo de Insurreição do Primeiro Mundo\" (2004), analisando relações entre forma e história. Observaremos que, em nossa atual civilização, fundada na lógica da mercadoria, na comercialização da arte, na espetacularização da vida (no sentido debordiano), e no embrutecido e fragmentário deslumbramento pós-moderno frente aos mesmos paradigmas exaltados como inovações (ou no esmaecimento do afeto, na expressão de Jameson), o teatro histórico, épico e dialético do Bread and Puppet segue resistindo efetivamente, na contramão da sociedade de consumo, na insurreição contra o mundo globalizado, a insurreição \"da mente contra a supremacia do dinheiro e a insurreição de toda a alma do teatro de bonecos contra a estupidez do maravilhamento pós-moderno\". / Originated in the city of New York in the 1960s, the Bread & Puppet Theater established itself amidst the North American artistic vanguard of the 20th century. It was especially known for its demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam war. Four decades later, during the Iraq war, the group leaded by Peter Schumann, now established in Vermont, continues with their papier-maché theater, demonstrating and protesting against the evil and unfair empires of the globalized world. This study compares Gates of Hell (1998) - the final \"Domestic Resurrection Circus\"- an annual show presented to thousands of people, to Upside Down World - a new version of the circus called \"First World Insurrection Circus\" (2004) - analyzing the relationships between form and history. The analysis reveals that in our current civilization, which is largely based on the logic of commodities, in the commercialization of art, in the \"spectacularization\" of life (in debordian sense) and in the brutalized and fragmented post-modern wonderfulness, which presents and glorifies the same paradigms as innovations (or in its waning of affect, in Fredric Jameson\'s sense), Bread and Puppet\'s historical, epic and dialectic theater effectively resists, going the opposite direction of consumer society, in the insurrection against globalized world, the insurrection \"of the mind against the supremacy of money and the insurrection of the whole soul of puppetry against the stupidity of post-modern wonderfulness\".

Criado na cidade de Nova Iorque no início dos anos sessenta, o Bread & Puppet Theater estabeleceu-se em meio à vanguarda artística norte-americana do século XX, tornando-se célebre nas apresentações e paradas de rua em protesto contra a guerra do Vietnã. Quatro décadas de teatro mais tarde, em plena guerra no Iraque, o grupo dirigido por Peter Schumann, agora radicado em Vermont, prossegue com seu teatro de papel-maché, em protesto contra os impérios vis e injustos do mundo globalizado. Esta pesquisa compara o espetáculo Portões do Inferno, último \"Circo de Ressurreição Doméstica\" (1998), espetáculo anual apresentado a dezenas de milhares de pessoas, a O Mundo de Pernas para o Ar, uma nova versão do Circo - \"Circo de Insurreição do Primeiro Mundo\" (2004), analisando relações entre forma e história. Observaremos que, em nossa atual civilização, fundada na lógica da mercadoria, na comercialização da arte, na espetacularização da vida (no sentido debordiano), e no embrutecido e fragmentário deslumbramento pós-moderno frente aos mesmos paradigmas exaltados como inovações (ou no esmaecimento do afeto, na expressão de Jameson), o teatro histórico, épico e dialético do Bread and Puppet segue resistindo efetivamente, na contramão da sociedade de consumo, na insurreição contra o mundo globalizado, a insurreição \"da mente contra a supremacia do dinheiro e a insurreição de toda a alma do teatro de bonecos contra a estupidez do maravilhamento pós-moderno\". / Originated in the city of New York in the 1960s, the Bread & Puppet Theater established itself amidst the North American artistic vanguard of the 20th century. It was especially known for its demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam war. Four decades later, during the Iraq war, the group leaded by Peter Schumann, now established in Vermont, continues with their papier-maché theater, demonstrating and protesting against the evil and unfair empires of the globalized world. This study compares Gates of Hell (1998) - the final \"Domestic Resurrection Circus\"- an annual show presented to thousands of people, to Upside Down World - a new version of the circus called \"First World Insurrection Circus\" (2004) - analyzing the relationships between form and history. The analysis reveals that in our current civilization, which is largely based on the logic of commodities, in the commercialization of art, in the \"spectacularization\" of life (in debordian sense) and in the brutalized and fragmented post-modern wonderfulness, which presents and glorifies the same paradigms as innovations (or in its waning of affect, in Fredric Jameson\'s sense), Bread and Puppet\'s historical, epic and dialectic theater effectively resists, going the opposite direction of consumer society, in the insurrection against globalized world, the insurrection \"of the mind against the supremacy of money and the insurrection of the whole soul of puppetry against the stupidity of post-modern wonderfulness\".