FOMITE
Fomite is proud to be publishing much new literary and graphic work by Peter Schumann, founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. We recommend you order these books from Bread & Puppet, so that royalties go directly to the theater, without online stores taking their normal 30% off the top.
You can also order from online booksellers, or ask if your local, indy bookstore can order one for you.
We Possibilitarians One
We Possibilitarians Two
We are at the beginning of the possibilitarian takeover of society. We herewith dispose of the incompetent ruling class by underthrowing it from the toes up, & we immediately implement the 1000 alternatives to the destructive habits of capitalism.
Politics must abandon its traditional war & weapons preoccupations & make the severe health issues of our one and only mother earth and her earthlings its primary concern.
The term “possibilitarian” approximates the word “möglichkeitsmensch” in Robert Musil's novel, The Man Without Qualities, & has been widely used in Bread & Puppet productions.
Gaza Genocide Bedsheets
Israel pours fire on Gaza, bombs explode over hospitals, schools, and refugee camps. Borders are closed: no food, no water, no medicines. Hunger, thirst, disease, and suffering prevail. Gaza Genocide Bedsheets collects 55 bedsheet paintings in an 8x8" full-color paperback.
Tears Clouds Trees
Tears of Sorrow undertake a fantastical migration through clouds and forests to the Land of Tears of Overwhelming Joy.
Kropotkin Says
Prince Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921), the great thinker of anarchist communism, has plenty to say to our late capitalist culture. His words, inspiring Peter Schumann's thought and art, make here a small book to be considered, and considered, and considered again.
Abracadabra Yes No Apocalypse
The end of our once-modern world approaches, accelerates, and begins to overwhelm. Here, in this book, a program, cast of characters, and prognosis for the stupendous event. Step right up.
She Sits She Rides She Flies
Small bas-relief scenes, some with sculpted figures, made by Peter Schumann in the early 1970s, are paired with a biographical narrative pieced together from several interviews with Elka Schumann, in parallel with Peter's earlier images, each telling its own analogous story.
Es ist vollbracht — Mission Accomplished
When Peter Schumann saw a copy of Fomite's NOTES OF DEVASTATION, a compilation of the three Passions Schütz composed in his eighties, he offered to "mess it up" with drawings reflecting his secular reading of the passion stories, his German historical sense of the Thirty Years War, and his reflections on the currency of the passion themes. ES IST VOLLBRACHT — MISSION ACCOMPLISHED is that mess-up.
Erbarme dich — Have Mercy
The aria "Erbarme dich" from the J.S. Bach St. Matthew Passion is set with crayon drawings by Peter Schumann, images of the Insenheim Altarpiece by Matthias Grünewald, and woodcuts by Hans Holbein the Younger.
Handouts and Obligations
In these trying times, we have many new obligations — for example, the obligation for swimming, the obligation to embrace, the obligation to occupy the earth.
Declaration of Light
Peter Schumann, the director of the world-famous Bread & Puppet Theater, under siege by Covid in his studio, has been painting on a huge collection of old bedsheets donated to the theater, and scrawling wisdom screeds on small pieces of paper. He, like most of us, is appalled by the stupidity triumphant, steering the planet toward several destinations of doom. At the same time, nursing his indomitable spirit, Schumann, unlike many of us, can imagine the possibility of light and transcendence.
Beginning with black and white murmurings, Declaration of Light bursts into flaming color as our inevitable struggle ensues, and settles into landscapes of green and blue as hope extrapolates and gathers.
Bedsheet Mitigations
Orders of service for the unfuneraled.
All
All, Nothing, Nothing at All
Selected images from an exhibit, The Existibility Installation, at T. W. Wood Gallery in Montpelier, Vermont, by Peter Schumann, founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater.
A Child’s Deprimer is a compilation of texts and images by Peter Schumann that celebrate and call forth a reshaping the world to be led by the kids.
Life and Death of Charlotte Salomon
Paintings inspired by the work of the German painter, Charlotte Salomon.
From the Possibilitarian Arsenal of Belligerent and Not So Belligerent Slogans
Following in the political and literary tradition of texts that asked “What is to be done?”, Peter Schumann contributes to the graphic history of revolutionary postering with these pages of comic stories and slogans, belligerent and not-so-belligerent.
We
A visitor to the Bread & Puppet Museum will find a vast array of masks, sculptures, paintings and puppets from inches to yards tall images of vulnerable humanity. Across half a century of the theater’s work these figures, and those who oppress them, have been the pervasive characters of Peter Schumann’s concern, present in hundreds of forms, the background and face of his universe. But recently, the background has arisen, and broken into the foreground as refugees created by US-spawned chaos, the truly wretched of the earth, have desperately crossed borders seeking safety and a temporary home. The consequences, along with climate mayhem, define our 21st century. Peter Schuman, himself once a refugee, has compressed his analysis and his rage into this little book.
Bread & Sentences
Bread & Sentences contains aphorisms gleaned from working notebooks, with a graphic narrative, The Situation, interspersed.
Faust 3
In a recent clandestine interview at his graveside, Goethe was asked whether Faust’s search for meaning he had committed his life to was completed by the end of Faust 2, or whether this search should be resumed. Goethe said : we now very definitely need Faust 3.
Diagonal Man Theory + Praxis Volume One
Diagonal Man Theory + Praxis Volume Two
Diagonal man takes on the current political situation.
Planet Kasper One
Planet Kasper Two
The British call him Punch, the Italians, Pulchinello, the Russians, Petruchka, the Native Americans, Coyote. These are the figures we may know. But every culture that worships authority will breed a Punch-like, anti authoritarian resister. Yin and yang — it has to happen. The Germans call him Kasper. Truth-telling and serious pranking are dangerous professions when going up against power. Bradley Manning sits naked in solitary; Julian Assange is pursued by Interpol, Obama's Department of Justice, and Amazon.com. But — in contrast to merely human faces — masks and theater can often slip through the bars. Consider our American Kaspers: Charlie Chaplin, Woody Guthrie, Abbie Hoffman, the Yes Men — theater people all, utilizing various forms to seed critique. Their profiles and tactics have evolved along with those of their enemies. Who are the bad guys that call forth the Kaspers? Over the last half century, with his Bread & Puppet Theater, Peter Schumann has been tireless in naming them, excoriating them with Kasperdom.
— from Marc Estrin’s Forward to Planet Kasper
Ron Jacobs’ review of Planet Kasper in Dissident Voices
“You Can Read It in the Funny Papers”
About the Author
Peter Schumann is the founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Born in Silesia, he was a sculptor and dancer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1961.
