It began with drums and marching, and concluded with a burial. Though this sounds more like a Civil War battle than an artistic performance, Bread and Puppet Theatre’s “Insurrection Mass and Funeral March for Rotten Ideas” was as politically charged as the former and an impressive and inspirational example of the latter.

The event drew hundreds of students, faculty, staff and area residents during the course of three performances this past Thursday, Friday and Saturday. “Can we have something like this every weekend?” Jane Goodale ’07 asked, seeming to echo the sentiments of a responsive and appreciative crowd.

Current Macalester students as well as two alumni made up the majority of the players. While some had been involved with the production for weeks, others who became aware of it more recently had only practiced with the group for a few hours. But such a production does not demand the flawless rendition of Shakespearean verse, and the Macalester student involvement underscored the alternative approach championed by Bread and Puppet.

Somewhat fittingly, Saturday’s closing performance, scheduled to begin on Bateman Plaza, had loud, expensive, and poorly attended competition in Fall Fest. Yet the apparent conflict did not faze Peter Schumann, founder of the Bread and Puppet Theatre and active director of the Insurrection Mass. He comfortably and energetically lead his performers and spectators crowded in front of the Campus Center to a new starting point behind the DeWitt Wallace Library, and proceeded with the first of twelve segments in the performance: The Introduction of the Gods.

Each of the Gods—and each segment of the performance itself—combines elements of satire, social commentary and seeming irreverence. Satire specifically can be defined as “correcting with humor.” With found-object-made Gods ranging from The God of Intelligent Poop to The Goddess of Not Quite Immaculate Conception, perhaps Schumann simply aims to correct that which Socrates and Plato aim to disprove: convention and tradition.

Bread and Puppet’s artistic philosophy also has much in common with Socrates’ notion that art must have a higher purpose, and derive not merely from an inexplicable inspiration. Schumann sees art as a public activity, something which should not be restricted to and by an isolated elite. Rather than expensive sets and supplies, Schumann has for decades sought cheap, readily available materials, and simple means of constructing pieces, specifically using paper mache.

For the second “scene” of the show, the opening prayer, the audience was met with a huge paper mache ear, whose duct was covered with a “closed” sign. Only with a primal scream from the audience did Schumann discard the sign. A particularly symbolic gesture with November 2nd looming, the expression of dissent has been foundational to Bread and Puppet’s existence from its beginnings.

A large number of the group’s early shows in the 60s—it was founded in 1962-63—were part of larger efforts to protest the Vietnam War, an approach from which the group has not shied away. It was part of the demonstrations at the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia four years ago, as well as those in New York City last month.

Yet, as Schumann explained during the Scripture of the Day, a series of readings culled from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Goose, President Bush, and The New York Times all relating to the elimination of evil, censoring the paper mache puppets was evidently part of that elimination of evil. The group was prevented from joining parts of the demonstrations in New York.

Along these lines, during the Sermon of the Day, a blistering speech delivered and punctuated with violin playing, Schumann elaborated on the Rotten Idea of the Day: “Asymmetric; as in asymmetric war.”

Portraying President Bush as something nearing a Divine Right Monarch, Schumann defined the Rotten Idea as “Elephant deliberately kills mouse.” Having earlier introduced “Lubber Land,” a place with seven conventions portrayed as grossly overrated and blindly unexamined—Electricity, Super Markets, The Economy, Enlightenment, Democracy, Freedom, The Morning, “Oh, [aren’t they all] wonderful things!”—connections clearly emerge among each segment of the Mass. Each segment, however, could stand on its own. The Mass unabashedly condemns a distinctly American ignorance, acceptance of convention, adherence to tradition lacking sufficient examination, and the arrogance of the Bush administration. It does not attack such ideas without humor, however, complimenting each element of “Lubber Land” with an irreverent painting, among them “Digital Christmas Tree With Fish” and “Depressed Automatic Man in Cardboard Box.”

As the performance would never be so direct as to simply bury a copy of Milton Friedman’s “Capitalism and Freedom”—such a lack of subtlety would eliminate the reflection the Mass aims to stimulate—there were two similarly executed scenes that distinctly emphasized the visual element of performance over the vocal or instrumental.

“Hell” was composed of roughly a dozen large paintings—Schumann painted all of these in the span of a day—each showing a distorted, smirking, white middle-aged man in a black suit. Hell hath no fury like Bread and Puppet’s army of executive vice presidents.

While this scene took place inside the Macalester Theatre toward the end of the production, it echoed an earlier scene which used Shaw Field more effectively than even a compromise over practice times for the rugby and frisbee teams could. At the far end of the field, about twenty painted cardboard cutouts depicting distorted, anguished youth lay flat. Under each was a performer. Over the course of five minutes, during which the only noise was Schumann’s directorial whistle, each cutout slowly rose, moved about, and finally convened to form a single entity.

The result was a tremendous mass of these suffering youth, set against Shaw Field, in absolute silence. The scene was eerily reminiscent of works that commemorate the Holocaust, a distressing reminder of the humanitarian crises which continue to plague the globe, the majority of which receive none of the military attention instead devoted to “asymmetrical war.”

Thus, at the conclusion of the production, the “Rotten Idea” was appropriately buried in the courtyard of the arts quad. Bread and Puppets was founded based on the idea that art is as essential as bread and once the burial was complete all were treated to sourdough bread, baked in a stone hearth Schumann set up in the arts quad.

Though Schumann would later explain that all he has to offer are idiocies, not insights, those in attendance, many of whom stayed around after the show to discuss what they had seen, certainly left with much to consider, and perhaps reconsider about their own lives.

But at the heart of Bread and Puppet is the art itself. Schumann addressed his actors after the show, discussing the difficulty that comes with being an artist. What is one to do when his or her personal artistic philosophy directly conflicts with that of the gallery or museum seeking such art? Edouard Manet famously struggled with the same idea; ultimately signing his name to the label on a wine bottle in “A Bat at the Folies-BergËre, conceding that his art was as much a commodity as the bottle.

While Schumann and his Insurrection Mass make no pretense about having solutions to such dilemmas, the production posed incisive questions the audience will likely reconsider time and again.