If the road to the revolution is a long one, the journey might as well be fun.

That’s what Bread and Puppet Theater has been doing since 1963, when Peter and Elka Schumann founded it in New York City, staging radical political performances around their anti-capitalist, anti-empire and revolutionary spirit with puppets in a circus-style setting across the country. Now based in rural Vermont, a band of 16 puppeteers are on the company’s annual fall tour visiting 33 cities, including four in Texas this week.

The tour, titled Domestic Resurrection Revolution In Progress, is making stops in Houston, San Antonio, Austin, and Fort Worth this week. Tickets are still available for the Fort Worth performance on Friday. After Texas, the troupe continues to Oklahoma City, Fayetteville, Arkansas, and wraps up their tour in Missouri, with shows in Kansas City and a final performance on October 26 in St. Louis.

Their venue choices are as diverse as their performances. In Houston, they performed in the Rothko Chapel plaza, a peaceful gathering and worship space around a chapel named for the late painter Mark Rothko. In San Antonio, they performed in Confluence Park, an environmental education center and public gathering space. In Austin, they performed in the parking lot of the Museum of Human Achievement, a diverse community arts center. And in Fort Worth, they’re performing in the outdoor wooded, quiet Hip Pocket Theatre campus.

There’s one guarantee, and one that’s enshrined in their name. After each show performers hand out freshly baked sourdough bread with a side of aioli.

The two-hour circuses are divided into twenty small acts, balancing serious political stories with lighter fare, said Paul Bedard, a booker and performer who also runs a New York live theater company. Skits range from supporting workers’ unions to reasons to visit one’s grandmother to a somber reflection on the lives lost in Palestine.

“When you come to a Bread and Puppet show, you are guaranteed to be delighted or enraged,” Bedard said.

When Hip Pocket co-artistic director Lake Simons learned the company wanted a stop between Austin and Oklahoma, she said, “my wheels started to spin and I put it out to our team. Everyone agreed that it would be tremendous. I think it is a great fit and it is an honor to have them perform on our property.”

Simons serves as co-artistic director of Hip Pocket with her sister, Lorca. Their parents, Johnny and Diane, founded Hip Pocket in 1976 with the late Douglas Balentine.

“Johnny and Diane of course knew of [Bread and Puppet], as they were all coming up in the same generation of artists,” said Simons. “They admired the Schumann’s for their ever-present faith in the power of ensemble and using puppets and masks to share stories.” 

Eventually both Lake and Lorca would have their own experiences with Bread and Puppet. In the 1990’s, Simons recalled, their tour stopped at the North Carolina School of the Arts, where Lorca was a student, and Duke University, where Johnny and Diane taught. Lake was a senior in high school.

“All of the students were encouraged to participate. They have always reached out to the community to participate and be part of bringing the story forward with a louder voice, a very hands-on approach,” Simons said. I was one of them! A senior in high school. The experience blew my mind!” 

The Hip Pocket in Fort Worth isn’t a typical live theatre company. Almost all of its productions are staged outdoors (Extreme heat forced one production inside this summer.) The seasons run from the summer through early fall.

But it has become a go-to destination for puppeteers. Basil Twist, a 2015 MacArthur Genius Grant Award winner renowned for his storytelling through the medium, is among the frequent visitors. 

Bread and Puppet hasn’t stopped at Hip Pocket before. But of all the venues, it may be the most familiar and fitting venue to the ensemble in Texas. Hip Pocket is currently located in an undeveloped (for now) edge of Fort Worth. It’s free from noise pollution, where the stars are visible and surrounded by trees and greenery, much like Bread and Puppet’s home in rural Vermont, where it moved in 1974, following a four year stint as the theater company-in-residence at the experimental Goddard College. 

The companies also share values, relationships, and embrace a certain style. Simons notes that Hip Pocket in particular emphasizes “simple forms and materials to create stage pictures and storytelling.”

“It is a special community, us puppet people, and we share and embrace the communal way of working together to tell stories, whether they be humorous or extremely complex, maddening or sad,” reflects Simons.

More information about Bread and Puppet can be found here