Peter Schumann

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Peter Schumann on the project “ Republic of the Free Wendland - Reactivated” 2010 in Hanover

Peter Schumann (born June 11, 1934 in Lüben , Silesia ) is an American theater director and sculptor of German origin. In 1963 he founded the Bread and Puppet Theater in Glover, Vermont , and is still director today.

Life

Peter Schumann was born the second of five children. His father was a teacher. Peter grew up in Brockau a few kilometers south of Wroclaw , which was incorporated into the Wroclaw district of Krieter in 1951 . At the battle of Breslau in early 1945, he fled with his family at the age of 11. A train overcrowded with refugees brought the family to Schleswig-Holstein, where they stayed on a farm. Later the family went to Hanover, where Peter Schumann attended the Lutherschule Hanover . After graduating from high school in 1954, he studied sculpture for a year at the Werkkunstschule in Hanover. In 1955 he enrolled at the University of Fine Arts in what was then West Berlin. Unwilling and unable to attend lectures, he soon gave up his studies. Then he went to Munich, where he met his future American wife Elka Leigh Scott. During this time he was particularly influenced by East Asian and the expressionist artists of the " Brücke ". With the musician Dieter Starosky, Schumann founded the “Group for New Dance” in 1959, which tried to break out of the tradition of classical dance and ballet. In 1961 Peter Schumann emigrated to the USA with his wife and daughter Tamara, who was born in 1959.

With his knowledge as a dancer and sculptor, Peter Schumann found no work there. His wife was able to teach Russian at a school in Putney, Vermont, because she had spent her youth in the Soviet Union as the daughter of an American communist. As early as 1961, Schumann and a group of friends had the first theater performance of the dance of death in New York's Judson Memorial Church. From 1962 to 1963 he worked at the Putney School, where he founded a puppet theater with school children, which performed in various locations in Vermont and Massachusetts. He gave puppetry lessons to school children at his wife's school. He had previous knowledge because he had made hand puppets in his childhood in Silesia . In 1963 Peter Schumann traveled alone across the country with a puppet stage on a trailer, gave performances in parks and on the roadside, and finally went to New York City that same year. There he rented a loft apartment with two other artists on Delaney Street in New York, which they used as a studio and for performances. In 1963 Peter Schumann founded the Bread and Puppet Theater and began to set up the theater's own puppet museum on Delaney Street.

In 1963 Schumann supported the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War with a happening in front of St. Patrick's Cathedral . In protest against the cardinal's blessing of the crew of B-52 bombers , the theater opened in front of the church under the motto “Napalm Jesus Baby”. During the action, the masks from an earlier Christmas performance were placed on long sticks and held up.

In 1967 the theater troupe was discovered by a French talent scout performing their play Fire . He invited her to a festival in Nancy in 1968, where her game was very well received. Appearances in major European cities such as Paris, London and Berlin followed. In 1969 a nine-month tour through Europe followed, which freed Peter Schumann from his financial problems. After returning to the USA around 1970, the theater received an invitation from Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont, to settle on a farm. The only condition was to include the students and lecturers in his productions. Peter Schumann accepted the offer and moved to Vermont with his wife and five children. In 1974 the theater moved to a former farm and dairy farm in Glover, about 25 miles south of the Canadian border, where it is still based today. Since 1998 there is also the own doll museum, which was set up in 1963.

Works

  • Peter Schumann: puppets and masks. The Bread and Puppet Theater. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1973, ISBN 3-436-01774-4

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Schumann, Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American theater director
DATE OF BIRTH June 11, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Lüben