Bread & Puppet Theater & Center at West Park to Stage THE SHATTERER OF WORLDS, 11/7-24

Bread & Puppet Theater: The Shatterer of Worlds. Presented in conjunction with The Center at West Park. Performances and Cheap Art Sale from November 7 through 24, 2013. Recommended for ages 13 & older. Week one: Thurs.-Sun., 8:00 pm: $18 general admission, $15 for students/seniors/groups of 6 & more. Weeks two & three: Wed., 8:00 pm: $15 general admission all tickets; Thurs.-Sun., 8:00 pm: $18 general admission, $15 for students/seniors/groups of 6 & more. Tickets for the performances available for purchase [cash or check only] in the West Park Church one hour before each performance. For advance tickets, visit www.breadandpuppet.org or call 866-811-4111 (toll free). West Park Presbyterian Church, 165 West 86th St. (corner of Amsterdam), New York, NYC. For further information, call West Park Presbyterian Church at 212-362-4890 or visit www.westparkpresbyterian.org and www.thecenteratwestpark.org.

As part of a world-wide birthday celebration of "50 years of sublime arsekicking puppetry," the award-winning Bread & Puppet Theaterfrom Vermont's Northeast Kingdom presents their The Shatterer of Worlds (chapel with naturalization services for applicants requesting citizenship in the shattered world), a political puppet performance enveloping audience and performers alike within the sanctuary of the West Park Presbyterian Church.

The Shatterer of Worlds intent, as described by Bread & Puppet's founder and artistic director Peter Schumann:
"At the moment when the first atomic bomb was dropped, Oppenheimer, the chief architect of that bomb, recalled words from the Bhagavad Gita, the Hindu prayer epic: 'Life, the splendor of 1000 suns blazing all at once, resembling the exulted soul, is become Death, the shatterer of worlds.' In view of the latest failed earth summit and faced with the likelihood of multiple planetary shatterings, this sentence is reproduced by the Paper Maché Authorities in the Cathedral of Impermanence for your enlightenment and as a reminder of our possible predicament."

Schumann then further elaborates:
"The overt extrajudicial capabilities of the society system allow the shatterer of worlds to function legally to cultivate destructions so minute and gigantic, the eye cannot perceive and the mind cannot behold them. No politician, no hazardous substance, but a well-established tradition and demon strengthened by endless practices of devastation, the shatterer continues to plot the assassination of existence-as-it-is, while disguising his activities as benevolent maneuvers meant to cure the two ailing adversaries: the planet and humanity. By imitating the miraculous blossoming of the evening primrose, the chapel manages to reverse the original statement: Death, the shatterer of worlds, becomes Life, the splendor of 1000 suns blazing all at once, resembling the exulted soul."