Welcome to Rumbel Strip, Vermont. I'm Erica Heilman.

In the walkway up to where we had our room, there were cracks in the wall, and those cracks were people.

And I drew those things. That's how it started for me.

That's how it's started for me.

That's Peter Schuman.

That is Peter Chumun. That is Peter playing fiddle with his eight-year-old grandson, Ira, on the drums.

Today's show is a conversation with Peter,

in which I ask him over and over and over again

to answer questions that don't really have answers about what makes a great performance and what is a great

performance. Peter Schuman is a driven prolific artist who makes huge outdoor theater performances with giant paintings and

puppets and sculptures. There's music, there are people making animal sounds and everything

seems to be made of paper machee, twigs, twine, and cardboard.

It's called Bread and Puppet Theater, and it lives in an old farmhouse in Glover, Vermont

when it's not performing around the country and the world.

There's a museum behind the farmhouse, an enormous old barn where all the veteran puppets

and paintings from past shows now live, thousands of them, some as small as your thumb, tacked or

taped onto the wall, and some as big as houses hanging from the rafters.

And what Peter Schuman makes isn't always good, but somehow it's always

great. There's a kind of wild current that runs through everything he does, and it all seems

to be alive even after he's been done with it for

years. Here's a conversation with Peter Schuman. Welcome. Now are you warm enough here.

Is it warm enough for you now?

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