A look at this year’s Bread & Puppet Theater tour, “The Upside Down World Circus.”
Photo credit: Bread & Puppet Theater
EASTHAMPTON — The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is back on the road, and its fall 2026 tour, “The Upside Down World Circus,” will once again return to Easthampton on Sunday, Sept. 13, at Park Hill Orchard.
The annual tour continues to draw on traditional circus tropes and familiar Bread & Puppet iconography by highlighting urgent issues of the day, touring the Northeast, Midwest and the South with puppets big and small, acts serious and silly and performances slapstick and sublime, according to organizers. Stilt dancers, paper mache beasts and a brass band will once again visit various communities, making “a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration,” organizers said.
Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City’s Lower East Side, the theater has been based in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom since the early 1970s. It is one of the oldest, nonprofit, self-supporting theatrical companies in the country.
After the show, Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and “Cheap Art” — books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press — will be for sale.
“Ever since [its founding], the company has made larger-than-life, politically charged puppet spectacles and served sourdough rye bread with garlic aioli to empower domestic resurrection from the toes up,” said Bread & Puppet Theater Press Liaison Paul Bedard.
The Bread & Puppet Theater is an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick, organizers said. Believing that theater is a basic necessity like bread, the company frequently brings its work to the streets for those who may not otherwise go to the theater. Its shows feature puppets often on stilts, wearing huge masks with expressive faces, singing, dancing and playing music.
Using a “do it yourself” and “cheap art” mentality, the group makes work quickly, Bedard added. Any given show may have puppets made just for that year’s show or puppets that have been brought out of storage, repaired and repurposed decades after their creation.
“We make and remake our puppets with gusto,” Bedard said. “Our shows are serious and silly, and I think people appreciate that. At every show, audience members tell us that they last saw us in 1970-something or visited our farm in Vermont just last year. There’s a tradition and forward drive. We haven’t fixed the world yet, so we need these puppets to keep working and keep inspiring us to confront our upside-down situation.”
Now in its 63rd year, Bread & Puppet will make stops in New York, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland, Ypsilanti, Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Decatur, Cincinnati and more. In all, the company plans 40 shows in 35 places across two months on the road.
The tour makes a stop once again at Park Hill Orchard; according to Bedard, it has become one of the most fun and largest shows on tour, he said.
“The field and all the art there are beautiful. [owners] Russell [Braen] and Alane [Hartley] are wonderful advocates for our work and community builders in the area,” Bedard said. “We do have one request for folks attending this year: please come early. Parking takes time, and the best way to help out friends at Park Hill Orchard is to one, buy their produce, and two, arrive with ample time to park.”
Bedard said the tour’s theme of “The Upside Down World Circus” was a simple one.
“The world is upside down. It seems everything is upside down,” he said. “We need to recognize that things are severely askew, demonstrate just how inverted it all is so that we can radically oppose this radically wrong system. This year’s circus looks at the brutality of empire, at home, abroad. But we also look to the many people and organizations banding together to oppose this brutality.”
Ticket prices vary by venue, but as with all Bread & Puppet shows, no one is ever turned away for lack of funds, Bedard said. Those needing financial assistance with a ticket should email tickets@breadandpuppet.org. For more details and the full tour schedule, visit BreadAndPupper.org/tour.
