Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to Cool People to Do Cool Stuff.
Speaker 2: You're a weekly podcast about puppets. I'm your host, Margaret Kilroy,
Speaker 2: and this week I have a guest, and my guest
Speaker 2: is Jamie Loftus.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 2: I should explain who you are. You're Wait, you do
Speaker 2: so many things. Sixteenth minute of fame is the easiest
Speaker 2: one to say because you are also a podcast host
Speaker 2: on the same network as me, which is true. Sixteenth
Speaker 2: minute of fame.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's stick with that. Yeah, sixteen fame.
Speaker 2: Only thing you've done. We also have a producer named
Speaker 2: Sophie Hi.
Speaker 3: Sophie him Magpie Hi, Jamie Hi, Sophie.
Speaker 2: And we have an audio engineer named Eva Hi Eva
Speaker 2: Hi Eva.
Speaker 3: I like that you looked up like you're like where
Speaker 3: Eva lives, if it even lives in heaven? He is
Speaker 3: up there.
Speaker 2: Well, I have another monitor that has the recording progress.
Speaker 2: So when I look at the recording, which is what
Speaker 2: Eva will be looking at, that is.
Speaker 3: There he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that rocks.
Speaker 1: I like Jamie's version better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, absolutely, like I look up to heaven.
Speaker 3: We're my editor's right.
Speaker 2: Wait, but that's dark because he's very much alive. That's yeah.
Speaker 3: We don't need to talk about Eva's mortality.
Speaker 2: No, but someday. But that's as true. That's true Eva.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry to break this too. At one point, all
Speaker 2: podcast editors must.
Speaker 3: It's the new All dogs go to heaven. All podcast
Speaker 3: editors good, also good to heaven.
Speaker 2: Despite many of them doing terrible things to the world
Speaker 2: by creating podcasts.
Speaker 3: It's true. Actually, yeah, you might be stuck in purgatory.
Speaker 3: You're doing a thoroughly neutral act.
Speaker 2: Yeah, hosts go to hell. I'm sorry to say easy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you don't even need to think about it.
Speaker 2: Really, No, I think that's the basis of most Christianity.
Speaker 2: Actually is, podcast hosts go to help. I'm really well
Speaker 2: versed in the Jamie Loftus. You occasionally perform, Yes, as
Speaker 2: a performer. What are your opinions about puppets?
Speaker 3: Ooh, okay. I like puppetry a lot. I guess I'm
Speaker 3: pro puppet. I'm not pro unnecessary puppet. I think that
Speaker 3: there's like nothing more insecure and unpleasant to me than
Speaker 3: someone using a puppet on stage simply because they are
Speaker 3: too nervous to be themselves on stage. I like when
Speaker 3: someone uses a puppet that is additive to the act.
Speaker 2: That makes sense.
Speaker 3: It's a very thorough answer, but I think that it
Speaker 3: describes how I feel.
Speaker 2: Okay, what about eighteen foot tall puppets? Yes, all right,
Speaker 2: Well then you might like today's episode.
Speaker 3: Well, oh, are you going to talk about the Broadway
Speaker 3: production of Shrek?
Speaker 2: Well, I did first see this in New York City.
Speaker 1: Two and a half minutes.
Speaker 3: Well they have the dragon that are little shop. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, I'm thrilled.
Speaker 2: So for the past few months, I've been doing this
Speaker 2: thing where all of the podcast episodes have been related
Speaker 2: in one way or another, and I've been trying to
Speaker 2: tell this story of the alter globalization movement, which was
Speaker 2: the movement of movements that came together at the turn
Speaker 2: of the twentieth century. The big famous thing that happened
Speaker 2: is the Battle of Seattle in nineteen ninety nine, where
Speaker 2: they shut down the World Trade Organization, And you know,
Speaker 2: it's the battle against neoliberalism. We've talked about neoliberalism. We've
Speaker 2: talked about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, we've talked about the
Speaker 2: rise of the Black Bloc in Germany, and we've talked
Speaker 2: about the Battle of Seattle in nineteen ninety nine. But
Speaker 2: along the way, I talked about how giant puppets were
Speaker 2: ubiquitous in the alter globalization movement. Really oh yeah, that
Speaker 2: you could not walk down the street without tripping over
Speaker 2: a puppet three times taller than you.
Speaker 3: Fascinating.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they were all very dramatic puppets. They are
Speaker 2: like weeping women that are like held up by three puppeteers,
Speaker 2: like as they like.
Speaker 3: That makes sense because I feel like theater kids generally
Speaker 3: have a tendency to join their resistance.
Speaker 2: That's true.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's part of why the resistance can get so.
Speaker 2: Loud, that's true. The same way that like marching bands
Speaker 2: was like only a couple things as you can do
Speaker 2: as an adult who really liked marching band, and the
Speaker 2: primary one is Joined Protests. That is like the main outlet.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said Ice Protests at a hotel a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks ago, and yeah, there was a very enthusiastic
Speaker 3: pop up brass section that they're like, I haven't taken
Speaker 3: this out in years. Let's go like just oh, it
Speaker 3: was nasty business, but it was great.
Speaker 2: If you are listening and you are a band camp kid,
Speaker 2: you should find a marching band and go join Ice protests,
Speaker 2: and they absolutely change the tenor of what happening in
Speaker 2: the street without diminishing the radicalness of it, instead encouraging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's great. It's a very festive and effective way
Speaker 3: to join a protest.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, Although it can be if you get pepper
Speaker 2: spray and arrested. At least there's good images as they
Speaker 2: like pepper spray the tuba or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know, Yeah, you will be held up as an
Speaker 3: example of like they came for the tuba player.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I say nothing. Yeah, And one of the
Speaker 2: things that happened is that they came for the giant puppets. Actually, ah,
Speaker 2: but I am excited to tell this story about Giant
Speaker 2: Puppets for a bunch of reasons, not the least of
Speaker 2: which is that it ties together a lot of the
Speaker 2: themes of the show. But also I don't get a
Speaker 2: lot of chances to tell a pretty simple love story
Speaker 2: on this show. And I can tie the rise of
Speaker 2: Giant Puppets to a hippie couple who one of them
Speaker 2: is still alive and the other person isn't, but like
Speaker 2: who spent decades and decades together making.
Speaker 3: Things, making pits, making puppets. That's wait, fat, what is
Speaker 3: your history puppets? I be curious enough.
Speaker 2: I don't have a lot of history of puppets, although
Speaker 2: I will say after I finished the script, I ran
Speaker 2: around my house telling everyone who's visiting and being like,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry everyone, I'm quitting everything I do to just
Speaker 2: make giant puppets.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: We just make giant puppets at the land. That's that's
Speaker 2: what we do now.
Speaker 3: I thought you were talking about like puppets is a
Speaker 3: part of stand up, which just sends you right to
Speaker 3: like Jeff Dunham's story, and it's like get them out.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, these are like dramatic feeder, like serious theater puppetry.
Speaker 3: One of my college internships was at a puppet theater,
Speaker 3: and like, though I don't know, I did it mainly
Speaker 3: because I had a crush on the puppeteer that lived
Speaker 3: on the top floor of the puppet theater.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, the well adjusted person that you're about to describe.
Speaker 3: Good old Brad. But you know, while I did not
Speaker 3: get Brad's attention, I did learn puppet folks are good vibes.
Speaker 2: I have tended to think. So my own history puppets
Speaker 2: is that I went to a lot of these protests,
Speaker 2: and I was a little bit busy being like, oh,
Speaker 2: we got to accomplish the following things while wearing all black.
Speaker 2: But I loved the theater that was happening kind of
Speaker 2: everywhere around. And then also, well, I went to a
Speaker 2: radical puppet show before I became politically radical in New
Speaker 2: York City. I went to a show put on by
Speaker 2: Today's Guests. No, you're the guests. I was like, us, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I actually a billion of time machine. I went to
Speaker 2: a show put on by Bread and Puppet. Have either
Speaker 2: of you all ever heard of Bread and Puppet? No, nope,
Speaker 2: I'm excited to tell you about Bread and puppett.
Speaker 3: This is great.
Speaker 2: The shortest version is that a bunch of hippies on
Speaker 2: the Lower East Side of Manhattan, especially this particular couple,
Speaker 2: got together and made giant puppets and did street theater
Speaker 2: and did community theater in the late sixties, and they
Speaker 2: had radical politics interwoven throughout the entire thing. And then
Speaker 2: they moved to Vermont and then they became cool hippies,
Speaker 2: and their theater troupe still performs all over the world,
Speaker 2: and they've inspired so much radical theater that it's kind
Speaker 2: of hard to track.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: I did a while trying to track their influence, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh no, they just was this well spring
Speaker 2: of political theater done with giant puppets. So the simplest
Speaker 2: version is the thing I just related. But I want
Speaker 2: to do the version that goes back fifty years and
Speaker 2: starts with someone's grandparents. Incredible because these people come from
Speaker 2: a lineage.
Speaker 3: Are they puppet Nepo?
Speaker 2: No, they're radical NEPO. I can accept that, but spread
Speaker 2: across a bunch of countries, but in complicated ways.
Speaker 3: Cool.
Speaker 2: One of the founders of Bread and Puppet is the
Speaker 2: woman who Okay, this is going to be the big reveal.
Speaker 2: The big shocking thing is that when people talk about
Speaker 2: Bread and Puppet, they mostly talk about the guy who
Speaker 2: runs it ugh. And you will be absolutely flabbergasted to
Speaker 2: realize that his wife, who is not necessarily equal part
Speaker 2: of all the creative things, but made the entire thing
Speaker 2: happen through labor. That somehow it's hard to imagine labor
Speaker 2: being invisible. Ye absolutely, but I think that that sometimes happens.
Speaker 3: Are you saying a woman did everything and no one
Speaker 3: cared what, what what?
Speaker 2: And I will caveat that even though the man I'll
Speaker 2: describe it a little bit, is always centered in the
Speaker 2: conversations around Bread and Puppet. I don't believe he wrote
Speaker 2: his wife Elka.
Speaker 3: Yeah, story that's always frustrating to encounter. And I always
Speaker 3: appreciate when in a dynamic like that, you know, the
Speaker 3: man's like, hey, appreciate the positive feedback. But Elsa's a
Speaker 3: bender the whole time, Like I don't know, it's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, and like it's kind of funny because I
Speaker 2: realized after writing a script that a bunch of people
Speaker 2: I know have like worked with Bread and Puppett, and
Speaker 2: I just I am working off of written sources primarily,
Speaker 2: so I don't know as much about people's personalities and
Speaker 2: how they interacted besides like what I been able to
Speaker 2: glean from interviews and things like that. But I want
Speaker 2: to talk about Elka and start with her because I
Speaker 2: actually think her background is more interesting. No offense, the
Speaker 2: man who might actually be listening to this because he's
Speaker 2: still alive, Alco.
Speaker 3: She's listening in podcast Heaven that we made up.
Speaker 2: Yeah that is, yes, absolutely, podcast even is the subjects
Speaker 2: of POC No wait, most podcasts are about bad things anyway.
Speaker 3: Well your podcast subjects go to podcast heaven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, I'll go to heaven. So Elka Lee Scott
Speaker 2: Schumann is a third generation leftist. Her grandparents co wrote,
Speaker 2: or rather her grandfather and his grandfather's wife, and then
Speaker 2: she gets left out of the story.
Speaker 3: Well, family tradition, it doesn't happen elsewhere.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they co wrote one of the core books that
Speaker 2: inspired the back to the Land movement of the sixties
Speaker 2: and early seventies. WHOA, So this is her grandparents or
Speaker 2: her grandfather and her grandfather's second wife wrote this. Okay,
Speaker 2: but we're actually gonna start with her grandfather. There's a
Speaker 2: man named Scott Nearing who is a regionally major player
Speaker 2: in leftist politics. Like he has a Wikipedia page in
Speaker 2: Elka doesn't, right, okay, and this is her grandfather. Throughout
Speaker 2: the early twentieth century, he was like one of those
Speaker 2: names that would be known at the time that doesn't
Speaker 2: really get passed on, or at least I hadn't ever
Speaker 2: run across it before. He's a kind of classic American
Speaker 2: radical guy from this period. He's born in the eighteen
Speaker 2: eighties in Pennsylvania. He is rich as shit. His grandfather
Speaker 2: ran the coal company in town. But Scott as in
Speaker 2: the nineteenth century became a vegetarian, pacifist, socialist, feminist. Okay,
Speaker 2: so if you're gonna be richish shit, you might as
Speaker 2: well do some of that, you know, may.
Speaker 3: As well do it as ethically as you're able to.
Speaker 2: Yeah. He first rose to prominence when he was let
Speaker 2: go from the university he taught in in nineteen fifteen
Speaker 2: for being too rattle.
Speaker 3: Was it the vegetarianism?
Speaker 2: I am constantly surprised by the like deep history of
Speaker 2: like I say, this is a vegan, the kind of
Speaker 2: annoying vegans. It have always been part of leftist politics. Yes,
Speaker 2: that part never gets like focused on necessarily, right, He's
Speaker 2: like mostly known as a socialist and a hippie back
Speaker 2: to the lander, you.
Speaker 3: Know, I do like the concept of that somehow being
Speaker 3: the last straw.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So they finally let him go because they're like,
Speaker 2: you're not gonna eat the fucking eggs because they said vegetarian,
Speaker 2: but he is, actually I believe it is vegan.
Speaker 3: Are you serious?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 3: And I should be ashamed that I'm eating my egg Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, totally. He's like, I didn't say that, And
Speaker 2: they're like so you think I should hate myself.
Speaker 3: I didn't say that.
Speaker 2: I just don't want to eat it, Like, oh, you
Speaker 2: fucking vegan. I didn't say anything. I don't know. Maybe
Speaker 2: there's a dick about it. I don't actually know.
Speaker 3: Could be a professor projection though, Like, you think you're
Speaker 3: so much fucking better than me, don't you. That's like
Speaker 3: my uncle's attitude towards veganism. You're just like, no, they
Speaker 3: don't leave them alone. They don't think about it.
Speaker 2: I want to eat a messy doug. It's fine, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't care at all. I wouldn't be able to
Speaker 2: get up in the morning if I like.
Speaker 3: Them A thousand uncles on your chest, like, and.
Speaker 2: So they kick him out and people rise up to
Speaker 2: defend him, and like you can't kick him out, and
Speaker 2: soon enough he joins the Socialist Party and then the
Speaker 2: Communist Party. He traveled around, including to the USSR, but
Speaker 2: he was like, actually, I don't think I like the
Speaker 2: USSR very much. In the nineteen twenties, and in nineteen
Speaker 2: thirty they kicked him out of the Communist Party for
Speaker 2: he like wrote some article but he didn't follow the
Speaker 2: party line. And they were the Communist party, so they
Speaker 2: kicked him out. He took his hefty inheritance and he
Speaker 2: bought a big old farm and he got really into
Speaker 2: hopesteading and vegan organic gardening. And this isn't the like
Speaker 2: early thirties and twenties, I think nice. He and his
Speaker 2: second wife, Helling Nearing, liked to pretend that they were
Speaker 2: self sufficient with their farm, but it was actually just
Speaker 2: their hairds that paid for it.
Speaker 3: Wow, this is a tradwife model.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And I actually do think this kind of
Speaker 2: like belaze a lot of the lies in the back
Speaker 2: of the Land movement. I say, this is someone who
Speaker 2: intentionally moved out to the country. But these folks with
Speaker 2: a bunch of inheritances wrote a book together called Living
Speaker 2: the Good Life, How to Live simply and sanely in
Speaker 2: a troubled world.
Speaker 3: Okay, they're like influencers. Yeah, They're like Barnes and Noble influencers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because once the back of the Land movement gets big,
Speaker 2: hippies start making kind of a pilgrimage to their homestead
Speaker 2: to like learn from them and stuff. So I feel
Speaker 2: like they like influencer tradwife culture. They're stealing that from socialists.
Speaker 3: That's what I have to say, one of their many crimes. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: they're only crime, You're right, right, No, no, no otherwise.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything else, that's fine. So this is granddad. Scott
Speaker 2: Nearing had a son. I'm going to trace all these motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: Scott Nearing had a son named John Scott, who actually
Speaker 2: I think was originally a Nearing, but he didn't like
Speaker 2: his dad. By the end of his life, we changed
Speaker 2: his name to his dad's first name. Yeah, I know,
Speaker 2: it's weird. I it couldn't.
Speaker 3: I didn't know you could do that.
Speaker 2: All right, do whatever you want with names. Well, not sure,
Speaker 2: probably now now.
Speaker 3: But it's nice to remember.
Speaker 2: Yeah, John Scott is a second generation radical. His father
Speaker 2: was like, actually, the USSR isn't so great, But John
Speaker 2: Scott's like, no, they're doing the revolution. So he dropped
Speaker 2: out of college to move to the USSR in the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, how'd it go?
Speaker 2: Well, it actually wasn't great to be a communist in
Speaker 2: the nineteen thirties Russia. It actually turns out.
Speaker 3: I thought I was going to turn out different for him.
Speaker 2: That's yeah, he survives, Okay, although it becomes a dick
Speaker 2: but we'll talk about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So he's eager to help build the glorious Bolshevik Revolution,
Speaker 2: and he gets a job as I think he's doing
Speaker 2: some like engineering stuff, but he's also a steel worker
Speaker 2: I think at the end of the day. And he
Speaker 2: marries a Russian woman named Maria Ivanova and they have
Speaker 2: two kids, including Elka, who was born in the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2: As we've talked about extensively on the show, the most
Speaker 2: ideologically communists were among Stalin's main enemies. Stalin got paranoid
Speaker 2: about the internationalists, all the people who'd moved to the
Speaker 2: USSR to be steel workers and shit, he was like,
Speaker 2: those are the enemy inside. All the people who were
Speaker 2: like I love the USSR so much, I'm lieving America
Speaker 2: to go there. He's like, that's the real fucking enemy.
Speaker 3: Get rid of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So John Scott and a bunch of other people
Speaker 2: lost their jobs. Their family moved to Moscow and he
Speaker 2: got work as a journalist, and he did not keep
Speaker 2: his mouth shut, and he wrote a piece critical of
Speaker 2: Stalin and the family had to flee the country and
Speaker 2: their ship left port just hours before the Nazis betrayed
Speaker 2: their alliance with Stalin and invaded the USSR.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's Elka's childhood, right.
Speaker 3: Honestly, it's like whatever coping mechanism you need, Alka, Yeah,
Speaker 3: giant puppets, yea, right, no worries.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So she's only a few years old, she's already
Speaker 2: had to flee both Stalin and Hitler. And the family
Speaker 2: makes its way to America, first to a farm in
Speaker 2: Pennsylvania and with like family friends, and then at Greenwich
Speaker 2: Village in New York City. And she grows up speaking
Speaker 2: both Russian and German, and home and young Alka grows
Speaker 2: up obsessed with the arts and social justice and leftist politics.
Speaker 2: As a teenager, she would go work as a social
Speaker 2: worker in low income neighborhoods. And she decided to do
Speaker 2: her junior year college abroad in Munich, West Germany. And
Speaker 2: the problem is that West Germany, of course was capitalist,
Speaker 2: and so therefore they had ads just like us, unlike
Speaker 2: glorious Russia, where you just get murdered instead.
Speaker 3: Wow, what an incredible, incredible.
Speaker 2: I should have been hired to do the Cold War.
Speaker 2: I'm always saying that there are people who basically whatever anyway,
Speaker 2: So here's the advertisers that support this podcast, and we're back.
Speaker 2: So she goes to West Germany to Munich. This is
Speaker 2: nineteen to fifty five, and she meets the man who
Speaker 2: is usually presented as the main character of the Bread
Speaker 2: and Puppet story, and he is the creative head of it,
Speaker 2: a German Bohemian man. When I say Bohemia, I don't whatever.
Speaker 2: I mean what people think, not that he's from Bohemia,
Speaker 2: which is nearby.
Speaker 3: We're talking about, Like he's wearing kind of silly pants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a proto hippie.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And she meets this man, Peter Schumann, and she meets
Speaker 2: him I think in the hospital. I've read a couple
Speaker 2: different of their meetcutes, and I don't entirely understand why
Speaker 2: she's in the hospital, but I know why he's in
Speaker 2: the hospital. He is in the hospital because he had
Speaker 2: been out trying to recruit people for his experimental dance
Speaker 2: troop ooh, and he needed to do that by riding
Speaker 2: a bicycle.
Speaker 1: I want to be in an experimental dance troupe.
Speaker 2: And he got into a bike accident and almost died.
Speaker 3: You think you do Experimental dance troup TV has probably
Speaker 3: the same energy of like an experimental comedy group. If
Speaker 3: it's anything similar, everyone's fucking each other and no one
Speaker 3: speaks five years from now. Also, it's like improv sort of,
Speaker 3: but a little bit cooler, a little better, and dancing
Speaker 3: as much. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very anti improv.
Speaker 2: Fair enough, Well, I probably would have wanted to join
Speaker 2: his dance troupe. That would have been fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, especially because it's like I'm imagining, everyone's in their twenties.
Speaker 3: It's just a bunch of hot twenty something's dancing around.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, who.
Speaker 2: All survived World War Two as children in Germany?
Speaker 3: Again, whatever you guys need, whatever you need, gess it out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they fall in love Elka and Peter, and Elka
Speaker 2: takes a year off of school. This is my favorite part,
Speaker 2: just because I identify with this so hard to go
Speaker 2: hitchhike around Germany bringing her loot with her, and the
Speaker 2: two of them bringing woodcuts to sell. Wow, they're both
Speaker 2: woodcut artists.
Speaker 3: You are of them? Yes?
Speaker 2: I love that there's a lineage that I can point
Speaker 2: to of Google's a word that no one knows what means.
Speaker 2: But people traveling around with instruments and whatever shit they
Speaker 2: can sell.
Speaker 3: All that rocks her lut.
Speaker 2: I know she does a lot of the music stuff
Speaker 2: for all of the things that go through. She's obsessed
Speaker 2: with music and do just like really amazing stuff awesome. Peter,
Speaker 2: for his part, was born in Germany and he started
Speaker 2: making bread. Bread and Puppet is actually just as famous
Speaker 2: for giving out bread. And I forgot to say that
Speaker 2: part in the short version they give out a rye
Speaker 2: sour dough loaf that is pretty that rocks. Yeah, hippies
Speaker 2: were into some like crunchy bread. You know sure.
Speaker 3: I just anytime that like us is involved in the production,
Speaker 3: I'm like, yeah, I'm in.
Speaker 2: They didn't coin that. I'm sure people have been doing
Speaker 2: that forever, but that is like their thing is like
Speaker 2: bread and Puppet, you get both.
Speaker 3: That's brilliant because I do feel like, you know, whether
Speaker 3: you're into the performance or not, I will be thirty
Speaker 3: percent more amenable to what's happening in front of me,
Speaker 3: at least if you give me a snack.
Speaker 2: See this actually makes sense because there's this way of
Speaker 2: when you run into a problem with your book and
Speaker 2: you don't know what the plot should do, and you're
Speaker 2: like writing a book and you don't know what plot
Speaker 2: should do. There's a tried and true method that I
Speaker 2: learned from a webcomic and I don't remember the author
Speaker 2: of the webcomic, and I'm deeply sorry. Where you go
Speaker 2: and you find a friend and you give them snacks
Speaker 2: and then you explain the plot of your book. The
Speaker 2: friend does not react. The friend just eats the snacks,
Speaker 2: and you work through on all the problems while talking
Speaker 2: to them, and they get snacks.
Speaker 3: I love that. Yeah, that does work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the very effective method.
Speaker 3: There is no resentment sewn between the two of you.
Speaker 3: You've both forgotten something. Yeah, exactly, because what his friendship
Speaker 3: if not a beautiful, complicated transaction of feelings.
Speaker 2: So he starts making bread with his mother when he's
Speaker 2: six in Germany, and sourdough rye bread was the common
Speaker 2: people's food of Germany at this time, and Germany wasn't
Speaker 2: doing real well throughout the twenties thirties forties, and I
Speaker 2: don't actually know when they turned it around, but twenties
Speaker 2: thirties forties not a good time to be in Germany.
Speaker 2: So his whole life until now, basically, yeah, sourdough rye
Speaker 2: is his thing. And when his family is ten, they
Speaker 2: live in a part of Germany that the Allies are
Speaker 2: bombing and the Russian tanks are invading and it's not
Speaker 2: safe to live there, and they become internally displaced refugees.
Speaker 2: And so they moved to a small village in Germany
Speaker 2: near Denmark. And he can only bring one bag with him,
Speaker 2: so he brought a bag full of puppets.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I hope he brought a sourdough starter.
Speaker 2: Well, his mom has that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's a mommy back thing. Wow, that's really wow.
Speaker 3: This is like a Pixar.
Speaker 2: Movie, I know, although there's going to be a remarkably
Speaker 2: non Pixar actually an old school Disney move in one
Speaker 2: a second.
Speaker 3: Nice.
Speaker 2: So they're internally displaced and they're dirt poor, and they're
Speaker 2: like all the other refugees. They're living off of gleaning
Speaker 2: the field for like little bits of whatever they can get,
Speaker 2: and they make sourdough rye bread and spread elderberry and
Speaker 2: rose hip jam on it because that's what they can
Speaker 2: pick by the side of the road, or elderberry's and
Speaker 2: rose hips. It also means so he's German. This is
Speaker 2: World War two, his first public performance. There's some dots
Speaker 2: people don't connect when they tell this story, and I'm
Speaker 2: just gonna connect the dots because I'm rude. I actually
Speaker 2: like this man. But his first public performance as a
Speaker 2: puppeteer was when he was eleven, and he is a
Speaker 2: refugee and he goes and puts on a puppet show
Speaker 2: for the German soldiers in town.
Speaker 3: Was this show about Magpie?
Speaker 2: I don't actually know what it was about, but it's
Speaker 2: for Nazis? He went his first public performance was.
Speaker 3: For not was for Nazi Okay, yeah, unless.
Speaker 2: There's a small chance the war had ended by that point.
Speaker 2: But it's nineteen forty five, Like there's a small chance that.
Speaker 3: But anyway, look, Peter, there's still time to set the
Speaker 3: record straight. Yeah yeah, Or did you not perform for
Speaker 3: Nazis at age ten?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Because this does not in any way influence this
Speaker 2: man's politics, like at all.
Speaker 3: If anything, you performed for Nazis under duress, But we
Speaker 3: would like the record string. Yeah, this is a silly connection.
Speaker 3: But did you see the Del Toro animated interpretation of
Speaker 3: Pinocchio that came out a few years.
Speaker 2: I haven't, which is funny because I really like Del Toro.
Speaker 3: It's terrific. It's very characteristically, it's very very intense. But
Speaker 3: in that I believe that Pinocchio performs for Mussolini. WHOA
Speaker 3: I mean think if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 2: Anyone who's listening who's mad at an eleven year old for
Speaker 2: doing this has not thought this through. No, It's like,
Speaker 2: here's like, no one's actually upset.
Speaker 3: I'm saying, if the Peter performing for Nazis at age ten,
Speaker 3: allegations are true, Pinocchio did it. Pinocchio performed from right.
Speaker 3: It's true there were kids.
Speaker 2: And for a glow up. The most recent interview I've
Speaker 2: read with this man is from a couple months ago,
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty five, and he is ninety one years old,
Speaker 2: screaming about how important Palestine is. Incredible, Like God, yeah,
Speaker 2: So Alka and Peter together now, and the pair of
Speaker 2: them are bumbing around Germany for a while, and Elka
Speaker 2: goes back home to the States after a year, finishes
Speaker 2: college and then goes right back to Germany to be
Speaker 2: with Peter. And I think that's sweet. I like that
Speaker 2: she like had to figure out some stuff for herself,
Speaker 2: and also like I guess, just so mad about how
Speaker 2: this narrative could easily just be told on Peter about
Speaker 2: but it's like largely them figuring things out together and
Speaker 2: not deemphasizing Elka's agency like all throughout it.
Speaker 3: So I feel like that's a classic indicator of a
Speaker 3: healthy relationship. It's like, Yeah, she doesn't drop her entire
Speaker 3: life right now, Like she goes to, yeah, do whatever
Speaker 3: she used to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's gonna move to like to help her
Speaker 2: with her career or later he's gonna like anyway, we'll
Speaker 2: get to that. By nineteen sixty, the pair moved to
Speaker 2: the United States together with two kids in tow and
Speaker 2: they moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which
Speaker 2: at the time was the center of a growing counterculture
Speaker 2: and was also coincidentally an affordable place to live. And
Speaker 2: so you can kind of get away with being a
Speaker 2: weird artist.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I've actually talked a bit on the show before about
Speaker 2: the theater and arts movement of New York City during
Speaker 2: the fifties and sixties, but I'm going to like revisit
Speaker 2: some of it because it's of my favorite shit I've
Speaker 2: talked about on the show. I did an episode about
Speaker 2: an anarchist street gang called Up Against the Wall motherfuckers.
Speaker 2: That was in the late sixties, and they were like
Speaker 2: friends with all the Black Panthers and all the like
Speaker 2: new left movements or whatever. Yeah, and they came out
Speaker 2: of an art group, a like anarchist surrealist art group
Speaker 2: called Black Mask. Okay, all right, I want to revisit
Speaker 2: some of that episode to set this scene, because to
Speaker 2: show that they're part of this vibrant art scene, so
Speaker 2: it's not just like, oh, they invented theater on the
Speaker 2: Lower East Side, which they don't claim, you know, right, Okay,
Speaker 2: And I also like drawing these really weird big pictures
Speaker 2: about how everything works politically and getting all my string together.
Speaker 2: By the nineteen forties, leftist politics were dramatically waning across
Speaker 2: the West for a few reasons. Prior to the Russian
Speaker 2: Revolution in nineteen seventeen, you have the anti authoritarian and
Speaker 2: democratic tendencies were more dominant parts of the left. Democratic
Speaker 2: socialists and anarchists were a bigger part of it. But
Speaker 2: after the authoritarian communist Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War
Speaker 2: by exterminating their leftist rivals. Yes, Margaret has opinions about this,
Speaker 2: theirs became the ascendant star and Bolshevism was kind of
Speaker 2: the thing. So you're in the nineteen twenties, you get
Speaker 2: this big burst of energy of people being like, fuck, yoah,
Speaker 2: we're going to pull this off, like what happened in Russia,
Speaker 2: we can do it here. And then you find people
Speaker 2: would go to Russia and be like, oh god.
Speaker 3: Uh, never mind, never mind, never mind.
Speaker 2: Yeah, turn around, yeah, Jase, your mind. As Stalin became
Speaker 2: more obviously Stalin, the left started to fracture, as people
Speaker 2: of conscience died at his hands or left communist parties.
Speaker 2: At the same time, you start getting the first scares
Speaker 2: in the US and a real strong propaganda campaign against communism,
Speaker 2: and then at the end of the thirties you get
Speaker 2: the sort of big last hurrah for social revolution in
Speaker 2: the West with the Spanish Civil War nineteen thirty six
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine. We've talked about extensively. I think I
Speaker 2: made you guess on that episode. Actually, I want to
Speaker 2: tell a story about this because I think it's funny. Okay,
Speaker 2: I was writing a podcast script at a coffee shop
Speaker 2: that my friend was working at, and they got off
Speaker 2: work and we're talking about some shit. We're talking about
Speaker 2: this and that and I knew a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: about a lot of the stuff I've been writing about,
Speaker 2: and you know, gave me at some point I was like, oh,
Speaker 2: like the Spanish Revolution. I swear to God, they look
Speaker 2: at me in the cafe and go, I don't really
Speaker 2: know much about that. Can you explain it to Magpie?
Speaker 3: That was your time?
Speaker 2: I know, I felt like it was a track naturally, wasp,
Speaker 2: where's the cameras, Magpie?
Speaker 1: I like to imagine a podcast microphone just magically appeared
Speaker 1: from the grounding.
Speaker 2: Yes, the flames of hell light up behind me.
Speaker 3: Well, I know a thing or two of that. Yeah. Wow.
Speaker 3: So how long were you at the coffee shop for?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Days later? Yeah, longer than it took for the
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty six nineteen thirty nine thing to happen. It's
Speaker 2: actually happened before I started this show.
Speaker 3: Good God, what a war drop that you're like, Well,
Speaker 3: actually this podcast came out of a day I held
Speaker 3: some what hostage for a sudden.
Speaker 1: The theme song of this show takes over the coffee
Speaker 1: shop speaker system.
Speaker 3: An echo from the back.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Oh that's God. Give Bloomhouse a couple of years. There
Speaker 3: will be a movie about a haunted podcast.
Speaker 2: I have seen a horror movie about a podcaster who
Speaker 2: goes to go report on a Oh I can't remember
Speaker 2: it was actually it was alright. It was a podcaster
Speaker 2: goes to the middle of nowhere to go report and
Speaker 2: then it turns out that everything is whatever scary rural people.
Speaker 1: I get really offended when they put the job of
Speaker 1: podcast into film or television, because I'm like, that's wrong.
Speaker 1: If you're not like unshowered and like on the floor
Speaker 1: trying to record a podcast, like that's inaccurate. They have
Speaker 1: them in these.
Speaker 3: Like bougie studios like full hair.
Speaker 2: I'm like, no, no, there needs to be pets or
Speaker 2: it's not a podcast studio.
Speaker 1: Potentially smelly, like you don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I shower, I swear, I shower, I swear.
Speaker 3: Listeners. I would love to see a super cut of
Speaker 3: like ways they've been report Like, yeah, because I don't
Speaker 3: think the media has been very kind, not that we deserve.
Speaker 2: It, but we're not kind to ourselves either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's like we hate ourselves already. That's so kind
Speaker 3: of part of the job.
Speaker 2: I think, at least being a feminist podcaster is like
Speaker 2: being aware that you're in a field that is like
Speaker 2: not full of good in the world, hate us more
Speaker 2: we dare you.
Speaker 1: A friend of ours made me watch the pilot of
Speaker 1: And just like that where Carrie Bradshaw is being a
Speaker 1: podcast and it's the worst thing I've ever seen, and
Speaker 1: it made me really sad.
Speaker 3: I think it's kind of charming because it reminds me
Speaker 3: of like a kid show about a kid who does
Speaker 3: the morning announcement. It's treated like that. True, Well, I
Speaker 3: hope you have an awesome day and I'll talk to
Speaker 3: you next time. Okay, I'm done. Like it's like, I
Speaker 3: think it's kind of cute.
Speaker 1: Fair, Okay, sorry, back to the script, back to the sorry, right.
Speaker 2: Get three podcasters in the Oh god, it's true. So
Speaker 2: all right, Spanish Civil War happens. I've covered it extensively,
Speaker 2: but basically fascist forces took over Spain and the left
Speaker 2: kept their shit together long enough to join the partisan
Speaker 2: fight against Nazis in Europe. But honestly, at least the
Speaker 2: anti authoritarian left kind of fell apart after that, and
Speaker 2: you have this very fractured thing. And between the Red
Speaker 2: Scare and all this stuff happening, and the fact that
Speaker 2: all these commanists and leftists of various stripes that just
Speaker 2: died right in large numbers, but actual people involved in
Speaker 2: all of those struggles survived. And I love that I
Speaker 2: can draw this through line where like a ton of people,
Speaker 2: for example, who fought in the Spanish Civil War made
Speaker 2: their way to New York City, and the folks who
Speaker 2: kept the flame alive for several decades were some of
Speaker 2: the people who were politically engaged but mostly on a
Speaker 2: cultural front. Okay, you could draw this narrative differently, but
Speaker 2: you can kind of refer to this sort of dead
Speaker 2: period of the left between the forties and the sixties.
Speaker 2: And obviously there's a ton of people doing a ton
Speaker 2: of work, especially the civil rights type stuff, but like
Speaker 2: there is a lull that you can map in terms
Speaker 2: of militant leftism or whatever. And the people who kept
Speaker 2: the flame alive, among others, were artists, and they were pacifists,
Speaker 2: and they were like religious anarchists, especially Jewish anarchists, and
Speaker 2: they were like authors and musicians and play rights and
Speaker 2: they just kind of partly because they like weren't threatened,
Speaker 2: right because like kind of have some free speech sort of.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's the rest here, it's the only kind
Speaker 2: of do.
Speaker 3: It's funny to think of like periods of time where
Speaker 3: making leftist art is not dangerous, but like, also it's
Speaker 3: not cool. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, I was gonna get dangerous again.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, it's true.
Speaker 2: And the oldest experimental theater group in the US is
Speaker 2: called the Living Theater in New York City. Yes, and
Speaker 2: it was founded in nineteen forty seven by two anarchist pacifists,
Speaker 2: Judith Mulane and Julian Beck. And I find them really fascinating.
Speaker 2: And so I'm going to I've never done this before.
Speaker 2: I'm just going to quote my own previous episode.
Speaker 3: Here oooh okay, because it was the.
Speaker 2: Coolest side years ago, and I think it's the coolest
Speaker 2: side now, partly because it ties into the Adams family.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, I'm in.
Speaker 2: Judith Mulane was a German Jewish immigrant. Her parents came
Speaker 2: over in nineteen twenty nine when she was three. They
Speaker 2: were some of the first people to be like, this
Speaker 2: might go bad. We should get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 2: Julian Beck was her husband and they were in an
Speaker 2: open marriage in the early fifties. He is bisexual or
Speaker 2: queer or whatever. I'm not sure what he called himself.
Speaker 2: He had his own boyfriend outside the marriage, but the
Speaker 2: couple were also sort of in a triad with yet
Speaker 2: another guy who was a doc worker who was also
Speaker 2: married to someone else. Okay, hot, yeah, long history of polyamorous,
Speaker 2: queer anarchist theater people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, none of this is shocking to me. And they
Speaker 3: got into theater.
Speaker 2: Yeah wait, they started the oldest experimental theater in the
Speaker 2: United States. And in nineteen eighty six. He also played
Speaker 2: the villainous preacher in Poltergeist two stop. Oh he died
Speaker 2: in nineteen eighty five, but it came out after if
Speaker 2: Terry died excellent, or he's the Poltergeist in it? Literally
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean there the productions are haunted.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was before podcast, so we might be in heaven. Okay.
Speaker 2: And then he wrote a ton of books, mostly poetry
Speaker 2: and some about theater and judas. I've played Granny in
Speaker 2: the Adams Family movies.
Speaker 3: No wait, like the original series.
Speaker 2: No, in the nineties movies, Oh.
Speaker 3: My god, the Angelica Houston ones.
Speaker 2: I don't remember the names of actors, Okay.
Speaker 3: Having conversations with you, and because you can tell me
Speaker 3: five thousand things I don't know and then I can
Speaker 3: teach you a simple fact.
Speaker 2: This is yes, I know the politics of the Granny
Speaker 2: of adams family, but I don't know the main characters.
Speaker 3: Sports tsha, oh my god, jud yes, Judith Molina.
Speaker 2: Wow, yeah, I yep. She's been on the Sopranos a
Speaker 2: bunch of shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she was working. She didn't come back for Adam's
Speaker 3: family values. She was replaced by Carol Kane.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, okay, so only in the first.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you've got to be replaced by someone
Speaker 3: Carol Kane, not bad.
Speaker 2: And I kind of can't get over the fact that
Speaker 2: the original crone witch of my childhood granny from Adam's
Speaker 2: family was played by a polyamorous, anarchist Jew who'd fled
Speaker 2: the Nazis at three years old.
Speaker 3: What more could you want? That's terrific.
Speaker 1: I know.
Speaker 2: At one point the couple got arrested for not paying
Speaker 2: their taxes, and their argument was basically like, what we did
Speaker 2: a lot to pay taxes. Government's bad.
Speaker 3: Oh sorry for bothering you, got it totally.
Speaker 2: They represented themselves in court, and when they represented themselves
Speaker 2: in court, Jude is dressed up in a Shakespeare costume.
Speaker 2: I don't know how that went. But another time they
Speaker 2: got arrested for having indecent exposure because they would have
Speaker 2: plays that involved nudity.
Speaker 3: Oh come on, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The Living Theater that they formed is still around and
Speaker 2: it performs in streets and in prisons, and they try
Speaker 2: to undermine authority in both content and form, and I
Speaker 2: think they're swell. And I also think that some of
Speaker 2: the first organizing meetings I ever went to for the
Speaker 2: ultra globalization movement were at the Living Theater before I
Speaker 2: knew what that was. Really, I'm not certain that's a
Speaker 2: guess because I remember the theater, but I don't. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of theaters in New York. Sure, Okay, that
Speaker 2: is the end of that self plagiarism. And I brought
Speaker 2: them up in a previous episode because.
Speaker 3: They sorry, oh that was cool, I'm going to use that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but you know who would never do plagiarism. These advertisers,
Speaker 2: That's right, none of them would ever.
Speaker 3: They are not using AI to write the copy.
Speaker 2: Guys.
Speaker 3: Come on, no, no, God, you'd be the judge.
Speaker 2: And we're back. Okay. So I brought them up in
Speaker 2: the previous episode, the Living Theater, because they helped radicalize
Speaker 2: bem Maria, who went on to become one of the
Speaker 2: founders of one of the more radical and interesting groups
Speaker 2: of the late sixties, the anarchist street gang, mostly white
Speaker 2: and Puerto Rican called Up against the Wall Motherfuckers and
Speaker 2: if you want to hear about it, I'm just advertising
Speaker 2: my own show. You can go back and listen. And
Speaker 2: that was part of the culture of New York City
Speaker 2: at the time. This theater that was radical. Although they
Speaker 2: were pacifist. That actually doesn't make them less radical at all,
Speaker 2: but it means that they might not have joined an
Speaker 2: Anarchistrea King. But our protagonist of this week, Elka and Peter,
Speaker 2: they're part of a pretty vibrant art scene and they're
Speaker 2: part of yet another proto hippie movement that we've talked
Speaker 2: about on the show before, a neo dataist movement called Fluxus.
Speaker 2: You randomly heard of this, no, so when I did
Speaker 2: a bunch of episodes about the band Crass, the like
Speaker 2: an arcopunk band from the seventies in the UK. They
Speaker 2: were also old hippies who were part of this neo
Speaker 2: dadaist movement called Fluxus that basically just like did Avant
Speaker 2: garde shit like pre hippie avant garde. That's how weird
Speaker 2: can we make our art? And so they're influenced by data,
Speaker 2: which we've talked about on the show. Radical anti art
Speaker 2: movement from the early twentieth century, and Flexus was also
Speaker 2: particularly inspired by this gay anarchist composer named John Cage.
Speaker 2: I know, I just keep being like everyone's an anarchists,
Speaker 2: This isn't true. Many of our Cage is amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 2: John Cage is fucking cool, and he is most famous
Speaker 2: for his composition for thirty three sits, where you, dear listener,
Speaker 2: could play this you just sit in front of a
Speaker 2: piano for four minutes and thirty three seconds and loot required.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's right. Yeah, although you did need a piano. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he'd be kind of like faking it to just imagine
Speaker 2: a piano.
Speaker 3: Whenever I think about John Cage, You're like, oh, wouldn't
Speaker 3: be so cool to be like nineteen again and just
Speaker 3: learn about the existence of four thirty three And I'd
Speaker 3: be like, oh my god, Like it's ah, put that
Speaker 3: feeling in a bottle.
Speaker 2: It's also so beautiful at how it like triggers conservative
Speaker 2: art people. Yeah, but also it's like made by one
Speaker 2: of the better composers of the twentieth century.
Speaker 3: No, he could also play yeah quite well.
Speaker 2: And near the end of his life he would talk
Speaker 2: about how he practiced four thirty three every day, what
Speaker 2: a good meditation practice.
Speaker 3: That's I love that. He uh god, I'm like, what
Speaker 3: is our version of that? He somehow managed to take
Speaker 3: a meditation and made it part of the work too, Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: It's like, no, he was still working yeah, yeah, ah,
Speaker 3: that's incredible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, recording yoga for content that would be yep, yep.
Speaker 2: So Fluxus is basically this art movement that's like how
Speaker 2: weird can we get? And it ties into way more
Speaker 2: shit than I would have expected, like the fact that
Speaker 2: you can talk about an arcopunk, which heavily influenced European
Speaker 2: protest culture as well as like a ton of music.
Speaker 2: And it's through Fluxus that you get bread and puppet
Speaker 2: and therefore giant puppets, street theater at protests and these
Speaker 2: are like really opposite lineages, but they're not. They come
Speaker 2: back together and like literally are at the same protests
Speaker 2: with each other, you know, decades later. That's amazing And
Speaker 2: I just I fucking love this shit. And so if
Speaker 2: you ever have like a street theater person and like
Speaker 2: a black block person are giving about tactics on the street,
Speaker 2: you can be like, y'all all the same grandparents, Like
Speaker 2: ideologically you all come from John Cage.
Speaker 3: You four thirty three motherfuckers have to figure this out,
Speaker 3: get along.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally, that's beautiful.
Speaker 3: That's like what makes me I mean, it does happen here,
Speaker 3: but it makes me wish that I had lived in
Speaker 3: New York at any point where it just seems like
Speaker 3: New York and Chicago is just like incredible places to
Speaker 3: literally walk into someone that shares your ideology but interprets
Speaker 3: it completely differently.
Speaker 2: It just ooh yeah, yeah, totally, there's an advantage to cities.
Speaker 2: I have to accept this as I like living in
Speaker 2: the woods, but I'm also like, there's a reason that
Speaker 2: being around people can make amazing things.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's still overrated at the end of the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah, so Bred and Puppett they move into
Speaker 2: this kind of New York City, this Lower East Side,
Speaker 2: Elka and Peter heavily influenced by John Cage and Fluxus
Speaker 2: aside a lot of other influences. I just am not
Speaker 2: going to track down all of them. But they're not
Speaker 2: just into doing avant garde shit. They want to do
Speaker 2: more medieval and traditional forms of storytelling as well, and
Speaker 2: so there's like kind of a sort of almost like
Speaker 2: ritual element to a lot of what they do, and
Speaker 2: they're not just an avant garde. And so when they
Speaker 2: move there, they fall in with a group that their
Speaker 2: own web sites right up calls a commune slash cult,
Speaker 2: the Uranian philant Uranian Philanstery.
Speaker 3: Okay, which and what do they mean by that?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't really know, because I don't know what
Speaker 2: a philanstery is. Great, but Wikipedia says it's an artist
Speaker 2: collective and not a commune slash cult, and they still
Speaker 2: have a website, they're still around. But I didn't dive
Speaker 2: in any further to that because I was like asking
Speaker 2: to be a rabbit hole, and a rabbit hole that.
Speaker 3: Sounds like a terrific rabbit hole, and it also sounds
Speaker 3: like the kind of thing where like it being confusing
Speaker 3: as a part.
Speaker 2: Of it, I suspect as much. Yeah, yes, it is
Speaker 2: starting to make puppets, and he likes making large puppets.
Speaker 2: He told some interviewers that the large puppet thing came
Speaker 2: from he saw Sicilian theater performed by working class Italian
Speaker 2: mechanics in New York and little Italy okay, which is
Speaker 2: another just like cool New York City thing, being like, oh,
Speaker 2: these like mechanics came from Italy and they were like, Oh,
Speaker 2: we're going to do the Sicilian theater where we make
Speaker 2: ninety pound wood and steel puppets that are like five
Speaker 2: feet tall or so, and like they like shake the
Speaker 2: feater as they're like moving around. Ah.
Speaker 3: Okay, I love it.
Speaker 2: And Peter doesn't understand a word of it because like
Speaker 2: I don't know if he speaks to any Italian, but
Speaker 2: I think he specifically said he couldn't understand like the
Speaker 2: Sicilian dialect. Okay, And Peter starts putting on performances, and
Speaker 2: I think he's already developed his signature move at this point.
Speaker 2: He bakes bread and he brings it to the performance
Speaker 2: and he passes it out to everyone to eat sourdough
Speaker 2: rye bread.
Speaker 3: That's way better than my signature move, which was once
Speaker 3: passing my pubes around the audience in a bag and
Speaker 3: butt chugging milk, just aspiring performers. You can't overshoot a
Speaker 3: hospitable calling card. Yeah, that's my best friend, some harder
Speaker 3: cell when you're like, does anyone seem the funnel I
Speaker 3: put in my asshole because I go, I would die
Speaker 3: for you. I love you.
Speaker 2: So you can just do the midsummer thing and bake
Speaker 2: food with your pupes in it.
Speaker 3: And then there's like, what was it? It was like
Speaker 3: menstrual blood cocktail or whatever to be like, you are
Speaker 3: my chosen one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, Like I think that's a fine and totally
Speaker 2: ethical thing to do. I don't actually think that. I
Speaker 2: get more and more nervous about people taking the things
Speaker 2: I say literally. No, I've learned I have a very
Speaker 2: dry sense of humor and my mind that was very
Speaker 2: off anyway. Whatever, So we talked about hippies and bread
Speaker 2: a bunch on our episodes, and we did some episodes
Speaker 2: about the modern diggers, and I keep calling them hippies
Speaker 2: when I'm talking about them, because that is the word
Speaker 2: that communicates the thing that I'm trying to get across.
Speaker 2: But in this early scene in the sixties, the more
Speaker 2: radical elements of it at least would not have called
Speaker 2: themselves hippies. They would have called themselves freaks, and hippies
Speaker 2: was coined in the nineteen forties to describe white people
Speaker 2: trying to be blacker than black people as a pejorative,
Speaker 2: and the concept of the hippie was more of a
Speaker 2: media construction. I don't know what Elkam Peter called themselves.
Speaker 2: I believe that that scene would have called themselves freaks. Okay,
Speaker 2: I like that better, I know, because I feel like
Speaker 2: that's like still kind of like if you just like
Speaker 2: described like the outcast, like funny strange kids, it's like
Speaker 2: freaks for every probably like yeah, fuck yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: it's like one.
Speaker 3: Of the most reclaimable terms there is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and it's a little bit more open ended.
Speaker 2: Hippie is like pretty specific connotations, you know, Yeah, some
Speaker 2: of which there are great hippies absolutely, but freaks you.
Speaker 3: Could be doing quite literally anything, Yeah, and fit under
Speaker 3: the umbrella, Yeah totally.
Speaker 2: Peter's first US show is at Judson Church, which is
Speaker 2: a longstanding social justice Baptist church where I've been to
Speaker 2: a bunch of events. It's right next to Washington Square Park,
Speaker 2: and so they're busy being freaks or bohemians or whatever.
Speaker 2: On the Lower East Side, but Elko wants to go
Speaker 2: back to school to work on her masters, and her
Speaker 2: master's is in Russian, not just in the Russian language,
Speaker 2: but like on Russian. Okay, And so the pair of them,
Speaker 2: because he's willing to follow her for her career, pack
Speaker 2: up and move to Vermont in nineteen sixty two. And
Speaker 2: I think that their grandparents are doing the majority of
Speaker 2: the childcare during this period.
Speaker 3: Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 2: Elka starts teaching Russian at the university she's studying at,
Speaker 2: and basically like, okay, subtext here it was a little
Speaker 2: bit like, hey, you can get a job too, buddy,
Speaker 2: maybe with Peter's own or whatever. Anyway, he gets rejected
Speaker 2: for a position teaching dance choreography. They're like, ah, we
Speaker 2: don't actually need that, or we don't need you doing it.
Speaker 2: He does some work as extracurricular at the university, teaching puppetry,
Speaker 2: but he also just takes the time to start touring
Speaker 2: around doing puppet shows around New England. He hooks up
Speaker 2: a trailer as a makeshift stage to the back of
Speaker 2: the car, which is either a jeep or station wagon.
Speaker 2: I've read both, and just like bums around doing this
Speaker 2: thing for a while in the sixties early sixties.
Speaker 3: Look, I love this, But if the lone guy pulls
Speaker 3: up it says, would you like to see my puppet show?
Speaker 3: I would say I'm good. I just hope he's scheduling
Speaker 3: the shows, I guess.
Speaker 2: And not just expecting, like anyone any you could busk
Speaker 2: with it, but it would have to be in a
Speaker 2: place people were going to be anyway, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, puppet busking is you know, it's a harder cell. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's hard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, accordion, real good busking instrument.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: They moved back to New York City in nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: and the two of them come up with a name
Speaker 2: for what will become their life's work, the credit of which,
Speaker 2: of course gets given a Peter. I'm not a bitter feminist,
Speaker 2: kill joy. I don't know what you're talking about. And the
Speaker 2: two of them come up with the name bread and Puppet,
Speaker 2: and the idea is both we give you bread and
Speaker 2: we have puppets here. But also I assume it's a
Speaker 2: reference to the labor slogan of the early nineteen tens
Speaker 2: and also suffragette slogan bread and roses. Oh okay, we
Speaker 2: need bread, we need to eat, but we need roses too.
Speaker 2: We need beauty as sustenance just as much as we
Speaker 2: need food. And in this case, beauty is just you know,
Speaker 2: represented by puppets.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: He told a newspaper called Seven Days about this quote.
Speaker 2: We fed bread to the public so that they were
Speaker 2: chewing while they were watching the show. We thought they
Speaker 2: were a better audience. And I love that. Like, sometimes
Speaker 2: the answer is this like very dramatic thing about like
Speaker 2: politics and stuff, and somebody's like, no, they pay better
Speaker 2: attention if you give them food.
Speaker 3: They just like the show better if they're not hungry.
Speaker 3: You really, Yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And he wrote a longer piece about this name in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy and I want to quote that for a
Speaker 2: long time, the theater arts have been separated from the stomach.
Speaker 2: Theater was entertainment. Entertainment was meant for the skin. Bread
Speaker 2: was meant for the stomach. The old rights of baking
Speaker 2: and eating and offering bread were forgotten. The bread decayed
Speaker 2: and became mush. The breadshell remind you of the sacrament
Speaker 2: of eating. We want you to understand that the theater
Speaker 2: is not yet an established form, not the place of commerce,
Speaker 2: that you think it is where you pay and you
Speaker 2: get something. Theater is different. It is more like bread,
Speaker 2: more like a necessity.
Speaker 3: That's beautiful.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I think this is where we're going
Speaker 2: to leave it. You know, Part one is context. And
Speaker 2: they have now created bread and puppet. Our heroes have
Speaker 2: just named the thing they will spend the next fifty
Speaker 2: years of their lives doing. And in one of my
Speaker 2: favorite love stories I ever got to tell on this show.
Speaker 3: I love that having performed for years and years, it's
Speaker 3: really nice being like, you know, bread is a more
Speaker 3: political act than you know, warm tacats is what I think.
Speaker 3: That's mostly that's the version of bread that I'm familiar
Speaker 3: with with regard to the art uh huh free food.
Speaker 3: It is a warm takata. Does that count kind?
Speaker 2: Does yeah? The various points in my life, the answer is.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, count yeah, CEUs enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah. On Wednesday, we'll talk about them doing all the
Speaker 2: radical stuff they're going to do, and they're also going
Speaker 2: to create a festival that tens of thousands of people
Speaker 2: come to and they're going to influence a ton of
Speaker 2: folks and it's gonna, you know, do the whole beautiful
Speaker 2: change in the world one bit at a time, brick
Speaker 2: by brick thing that we can all aspire to do.
Speaker 3: I love this.
Speaker 2: It's not very dramatic cliffhanger. It's just a like, isn't
Speaker 2: this like kind of wholesome? This is one of the
Speaker 2: moost wholesome episodes I've ever gotten to do.
Speaker 3: I feel great. Yeah, like, this is so lovely. I
Speaker 3: love a lack of a cliffhanger, like and do you
Speaker 3: want to hear about their positive legacy? Tune in Wednesday?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally anyway, Yeah, you got anything you want to plug?
Speaker 2: Here at the end.
Speaker 3: Sixteenth minute right here on Cooles and Media. Produced by
Speaker 3: Sophie Lijaman, who I've heard of her.
Speaker 2: I like everything she does.
Speaker 3: She's just a legend. Yeah, she's a legend in the field.
Speaker 3: She's a credit to humans writ large. She's my best friend.
Speaker 3: I guess I will also plug my book raw Dog
Speaker 3: that just came out on paperback, so get it out
Speaker 3: of the library, which is so cool. By the way, thanks,
Speaker 3: I'm happy that it's available. I feel like it was
Speaker 3: always meant to be in paperback.
Speaker 2: It's a very paperback style book. I listened to the audio,
Speaker 2: but it is a very like as adventure. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not a pulp adventure novel, but it's a pulp
Speaker 2: adventure novel describing the history of hot dogs and you
Speaker 2: traveling across the country.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: The most tragic thing that happened in these episodes involves
Speaker 2: a hot dog and you're gonna have to wait till
Speaker 2: Wednesday to.
Speaker 3: Find really well, you have to wait like Tiger totally.
Speaker 2: I want to plug that. I don't know. Listen to
Speaker 2: other shows on cool Zone Media. You can also listen
Speaker 2: ad free with cooler Zone Media. And also you can
Speaker 2: go out and directly interfere with wait Nope. You can
Speaker 2: join protests that advocate against ice.
Speaker 3: They're everywhere and if they're not near you, yeah, make
Speaker 3: all right?
Speaker 2: You see you all Winston.
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