The name is clearly derived from the Decimus Lunius Luvenalis’s phrase “panem et circenses”. “Bread and Puppets: is about an hour from here; or two gallons of gasoline and a small bag full of throw up away. It feels like a beautiful time-capsule of a place. Hard to believe how well preserved a lot of the work on display was. The glue that holds together the spectacular papier-mâché sculptures must be museum quality, and so must be the paper itself and all the paint. Some of the sculptures looked as if they had just taken some sort of loophole shortcut in time and space to get to the barn, probably just hours before eveyone’s arrival. Perhaps some magical gate does exist near “Bread and Puppets” for all kinds of things and people and animals. Some of the kids sitting around the barns and finger-painted cars also seemed to have arrived here from a time around the end of the 60s. Or a sweet version of that time. Intellectual conversations flowed freely between people who seemed to use any chemical products or sharp objects really, really carefully. But maybe that’s one of the secrets.
It was touching to hear an older woman play Подмосковные Вечера on a little plastic flute. Not sure how many others here have that deep connection to the song that can be only pushed into the soul of a little boy.
Magical times. Definitely for me.
Oh, and we obviously arrived after all of the performances had taken place for the day. So perhaps looking at those giant sculptural puppets and marionettes in a museum was a bit like trying to understand a ballet piece by staring at a wooden floor. But it was still very amazing, definitely worth visiting, worth the drive, worth experiencing. And I am very interested in seeing how a boy who is now two years old is going to return to this place again with a set of preconceptions and then new ones and then new ones and then some more. And I just hope that he will be able to embrace everything somehow in a similar way as he can now. But I guess that’s a completely normal hope.
Everything will be obviously completely different then, or the same, in a strangely different way. And maybe that gateway still exists then. I hope it does.
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