[1] It was active during the Vietnam War in anti-war protests, primarily in New York City, prompting Time reviewer T.E.

"[2] Many people remember it as central to the political spectacle of the time, as its enormous puppets (often ten to fifteen feet tall) were a fixture of many demonstrations.

The farm is home to a cow, several pigs, chickens, and puppeteers, as well as indoor and outdoor performance spaces, a printshop, a store, and a large museum showcasing over four decades of the company's work.

In the 1990s, the festival began drawing crowds of tens of thousands, who camped on nearby farmers' land during the annual summer weekend of the pageant.

[6] Since then, the theater offers smaller weekend performances all summer, and traveled around New York and New England, with occasional tours around the U.S. and abroad.

[10] This means that staff are historically paid as low as $35 a week (in 1977) and that many items used in the production of the theater, including clothing and raw puppet materials, are obtained second hand or by donation.

[12][11] Specific causes supported by the theater include: An hour long play that critiqued the ongoing war in Vietnam.

It was dedicated to American protesters who died after setting fire to themselves and depicted life for Vietnamese villagers during the war.

Years later, the AP explained there "was tense talk (later proved unfounded) of terrorist plots being hatched in the 'puppetista' headquarters, of bomb building and anarchist-fueled mayhem".

The Halloween parade was to occur fifty days after and 1.5 miles away from the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.

It was this attack which was the pretext for starting the war which Bread & Puppet Theater was protesting, and the company's "anti-war stance" reportedly "already placed it at odds with some New Yorkers", according to Dan Bacalzo of TheaterMania.com.

Fleming, who was not interviewed by Bacalzo (but is quoted as if she was), says that Bread & Puppet was not "disinvited", adding that it was she who first invited the company to march in the parade when she took over as organizer.

"Insurrection masses" are a common format for the Bread & Puppet Theater, as are such "funerals", though the "rotten" ideas change.

[24] Writers who praised Bread & Puppet include historian Howard Zinn, who cited its "magic, beauty, and power", and poet and NPR commentator Andrei Codrescu, who wrote: "The Bread & Puppet Theater has been so long a part of America's conscious struggle for our better selves, that it has become, paradoxically, a fixture of our subconscious.

[26] Keith Lampe, in WIN, also positively comments on the theater's 1966 anti-war demonstration by commending Peter Schumann's "concern for movement", "sound", and "appearance".

The movie replicated characters such as Uncle Fatso, Washer Women, White Ladies, and the many armed Mother head.

[28] In her 2008 memoir A Freewheelin' Time: A Memoir of Greenwich Village In The Sixties, New York painter and illustrator, Suze Rotolo, notes she worked a fabrication job with Bread & Puppet early in 1963 near Delancey Street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.