Robbie Leppzer is wrapping up a feature-length documentary on Bread and Puppet Theater, founded by German-born artist and sculptor Peter Schumann. Leppzer, an award-winning independent documentary filmmaker, thought he was nearly finished two and a half years ago.
“Then all hell broke loose in Israel and Gaza,” he recalled. “And artists, and Peter Schumann in particular, started making some of their best work to protest this war and protest what has been known around the world as a genocide.”
The result of that shift is a 45-minute documentary portraying Schumann’s artistic reaction to the Gaza conflict. “An Artist Responds to War” will screen at the Wendell Meetinghouse on June 27 at 7 p.m., followed by a discussion facilitated by Leppzer.
“It opens up people’s hearts in a way that normal documentaries don’t,” Leppzer said. “I’ve actually been blown away by people’s responses to the short film.”
He expects to release his feature-length documentary next year.
Schumann’s perspective is particularly poignant, having grown up in Nazi Germany.
“I am a war child. I am a refugee. I have lived through war, and all my life I have done anti-war protests,” the 92-year-old artist told the Greenfield Recorder.
He noted that the carnage he sees on the news from Gaza reminds him of what he endured under Adolf Hitler’s reign. Schumann, a gentile, said he struggles to reconcile the actions of the current Israeli government with the historical legacy of the Holocaust.
“It’s just a shameless, totally visible brutality,” he said in the film’s trailer. “It’s unbelievable what people do to each other. I have to do my jolly little bit of protesting.”
Schumann and his now late wife, Elka Schumann, first came to the United States in 1961 at the invitation of her parents. Instead of returning to Germany, they remained in New York City and eventually founded Bread and Puppet Theater. Known for its giant papier-mâché puppets, stilt walkers and brass bands, the nonprofit is one of the oldest political theater companies in the country.
“We came for what we thought would be a visit, and it turned into more than a visit,” he told the Recorder.
In 1970, Bread and Puppet Theater moved to Vermont — first for a residency at Goddard College, then to an old dairy farm in Glover, located in the Northeast Kingdom, five years later. The annual Our Domestic Resurrection Circus was created there, though Schumann ultimately ended it in 1998 after an audience member died as a result of a physical altercation.
The circus was succeeded by a summer program featuring weekly, smaller-scaled performances. In this new format, the theater addresses the issues of the day and restages classic Bread and Puppet shows from the 1960s and ’70s.
With more than 45 years of experience directing more than 30 documentaries, Leppzer’s notable feature-length projects include “Power Struggle,” which captured the citizen-led effort to close the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant, and “An Act of Conscience,” which chronicled the story of a Colrain family whose home was seized after they refused to pay federal taxes to protest military spending.
Leppzer, who lived in Wendell from 1989 to 2022, knew the Meetinghouse would be the perfect spot for a screening.
“I feel Peter has been doing some of his best work over the past two and a half years,” he said. “I’m very much looking forward to this. Wendell is a very unique community.”
Tickets are $20 at the door, $15 in advance and available at tinyurl.com/ArtistResponds. This event is part of the Wendell Meetinghouse Community Arts & Conversations series and is supported in part by the Friends of the Wendell Meetinghouse and the Community Foundation of North Central Massachusetts.
“Peter Schumann and Bread and Puppet are icons of the American theater of the last half century,” Court Dorsey, board president of the Friends of the Wendell Meetinghouse, told the Recorder in a statement. “Robbie Leppzer has spent countless hours with Peter in Glover, Vermont, preparing this new documentary film. The Wendell Meetinghouse is proud to present the premiere of Robbie Leppzer’s An Artist Responds to War as part of our Community Arts Conversations series.”
For more information, visit AnArtistRespondsToWar.com.
