Bread & Puppet Theater Opens THE SHATTERER OF WORLDS Tonight

Bread & Puppet Theater: "The Shatterer of Worlds," a walkabout performance running tonight, January 23 through February 2, 2014.

Week one: Thurs.-Sun.; week two: Wed.-Sun. All shows at 7:00 pm; $15 general admission, $12 for students, seniors, groups of 6 & more. Bread & aioli served and Cheap Art sold after each show. Held in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts (BCA), 539 Tremont St., South End, Boston, MA 02116 [conveniently located near the MBTA Orange Line & bus connections]. Tickets for the performances available for purchase in the Cyclorama [cash or check only] one hour before each show. For advance tickets: http://www.theatermania.com, 866-811-4111 (toll free). For further information, call the Boston-area Bread & Puppet Theater information line at 617-286-6694 or visit www.breadandpuppet.org.

The award-winning Bread & Puppet Theater from Vermont's Northeast Kingdom presents their "The Shatterer of Worlds (chapel with naturalization services for applicants requesting citizenship in the shattered world)," a walkabout political puppet performance, enveloping audience and performers alike within the Cyclorama.

"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."

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