Advertisement
The one and only Bread & Puppet Circus is coming to SALS to celebrate our 50th Anniversary. Tickets are only $15!Their Upside-Down World Circus will feature puppets big and small, acts serious and silly, and performances slapstick and sublime. Stilt dancers, paper mâché beasts, and a riotous brass band will make a raucous, colorful spectacle of protest and celebration.
The circus will be at the SALS Historic Oak Hill School, 140 School Street, Oak Hill, WV at 7pm on October 22, 2026.
The Bread and Puppet Theater is an internationally celebrated company that champions a visually rich, street-theater brand of performance art filled with music, dance and slapstick. Believing that theater is a basic necessity like bread, the company frequently brings its work to the streets for those who may not otherwise go to the theater. Its shows are political and spectacular, with puppets often on stilts, wearing huge masks with expressive faces, singing, dancing and playing music.
SALS, known for its focus on providing healthy food, habitable housing, workforce training, and educational services for low-income families in rural coalfield communities, is pleased that the Bread & Puppet Theater is coming to the area, according to SALS Co-founder and Volunteer Director John David. He noted that SALS has always been a catalyst for change with the theme of "Constructing Change and Bridging Gaps" from the bottom up.
With this show, director Peter Schumann asks, "Is it or is it not? Am I asleep or am I awake? Am I a cockroach or am I a me?" He continues with a distinctly B&P call to action: "Possibilitarians! We must demonstrate humanity's upside-down situation in the face of the government's depraved falsehoods. Luxury silence and despair must be replaced by revolt orchestras that radically oppose the radically wrong system. It is time to unforget the revolution-in-progress and aim for the evermore on the universe's shore."
After the show Bread & Puppet will serve its famous sourdough rye bread with aioli, and Bread & Puppet's "Cheap Art" -books, posters, postcards, pamphlets and banners from the Bread & Puppet Press - will be for sale.
Now in it's 63rd year, Bread & Puppet is making its only stop in West Virginia at the Southern Appalachian Labor School. It will tour 35 other locations including Chicago, Minneapolis, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, Nashville, Decatur, Cincinnati, and more. In all the company plans 40 shows in 35 places during two months on the road. For the SALS event, tickets are $15 with free tickets available for youth under 12 and for anyone who needs them. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. For further information and tickets, contact SALS at www.sals.org or 304-250-7627 or go to breadandpuppet.org/tour. Following the event, the performers will stay at the SALS Community Center in Beards Fork before departing for Cincinnati.
Bread and Puppet is recognized throughout the world and has won distinction at international theater festivals in Italy, Poland, Colombia, and Yugoslavia, beginning with their break-out performances at the 1968 Nancy Festival in France. Notable awards include the Erasmus Prize of Amsterdam, the Puppeteers of America's President Award, and the Vermont Governor's Award. Bread and Puppet is constantly active, performing at its farm in Glover, VT, and in local churches, schools and parades. It regularly tours Europe, Canada, and the United States and has recently visited El Salvador, Haiti, Russia, and Korea.
Founded in 1963 by Peter Schumann on New York City's Lower East Side, the theater has been based in the North East Kingdom of Vermont since the early 1970s and is one of the oldest, nonprofit self-supporting theatrical companies in the country.
For advance tickets go to: https://www.zeffy.com/en-US/ticketing/bandp-in-oak-hill-wv-fall-2026-the-upside-down-world-circus
For more details, go to https://breadandpuppet.org/
Advertisement
Event venue
140 School St, Oak Hill, WV 25901-2932, United States
Tickets
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.