THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY
Executive Director, Crystal Field
Presents
BREAD + PUPPET
The Upside Down World Circus
-and-
Woyzeck
December 2 – 13, 2026
Tickets $20, Students, Seniors, Children $15
Run Time: Both shows are about 1 hour
JOHNSON THEATER
No one turned away for lack of funds. We mean it. If you need assistance with a ticket, please email tickets@breadandpuppet.org.
The Upside Down World Circus
Wednesday, December 2 @ 8pm
Thursday, December 3 @ 8pm
Friday, December 4 @ 8pm
Saturday, December 5 @ 3pm & 8pm
Sunday, December 6 @ 3pm
Get ready for a paper mache spectacle featuring puppets big and small, acts serious and silly, and performances slapstick and sublime. Stilt dancers, paper maché beasts, and a riotous brass band make a raucous, colorful circus of protest and celebration.
In this year’s circus, director Peter Schumann asks “Is it or is it not? Am I asleep or am I awake? Am I a cockroach or am I a me?” He further urges us Possibilitarians to “demonstrate humanity’s upside-down situation in the face of the government’s depraved falsehoods. Luxury silence and despair must be replaced by revolt orchestras that radically oppose the radically wrong system. It is time to unforget the revolution-in-progress!”
Woyzeck
Thursday, December 10 @ 8pm
Friday, December 11 @ 8pm
Saturday, December 12 @ 3pm & 8pm
Sunday, December 13 @ 3pm
Nearly 200 years after Georg Büchner wrote his searing social critique and 50 years after Peter Schumann adapted it for a tour of Germany, Bread & Puppet presents an urgent revival of Woyzeck. “When the whole world seems to be going up in flames I’ve heard a terrible voice talking to me” cries Woyzeck. The script remains “unfortunately more than relevant” notes Schumann, who says of Büchner, “I don’t know how he does it, but what he does is totally real, it’s the language of the proletariat, of poverty, of deprivation. Obligatory viewing for all citizens and migrants to this country.”
As always, the shows will include puppets large and small, music, up-to-the-minute politics, and spectacles not to be missed. After the show Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread & Puppet’s “Cheap Art” – books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press – will be for sale.