Peter Schumann

In this pastoral corner of the Northeast Kingdom, it seems like ancient history to think of the Bread and Puppet Theater as a vital product of New York City. That was back in the '60s, when America was swirling in anti-war sentiment. Most theaters of turmoil bit the dust when the Vietnam War and the flower children faded. Bread and Puppet moved north. And with the depth of conviction of its founder, Peter Schumann, remained ideologically intact.

In this pastoral corner of the Northeast Kingdom, it seems like ancient history to think of the Bread and Puppet Theater as a vital product of New York City. That was back in the '60s, when America was swirling in anti-war sentiment. Most theaters of turmoil bit the dust when the Vietnam War and the flower children faded. Bread and Puppet moved north. And with the depth of conviction of its founder, Peter Schumann, remained ideologically intact.

I wish to voice my admiration for the unbelievable bravery and professionalism of the LAPD officers involved in the shootout in North Hollywood, and in particular the officers who raced to confront the remaining gunman knowing full well the lethal dangers and risk that was in front of them. For once I was grateful for the media presence that brought home to millions of people the dangers confronting police officers in "just another day at the office." I have always held police officers in the highest regard for their ability to get the job done despite the constant media criticism and scrutiny from vocal minority groups.

With its band playing and leader Peter Schumann high on 20-foot stilts disguised as a tender angel of joy, the ubiquitous Bread and Puppet Theater marched its way through Chinatown in a Sunday parade that was part of the Moon Festival. There was, alas, no adequate way to know this, unless you had psychic powers or simply stumbled on the event. Festival promotion indicated something by the Bread and Puppet at Olvera Street, but nothing that began blocks away at the Alpine Recreation Center.

IT'S been three years since American college student and pro-Palestinian protester Rachel Corrie was killed beneath an Israeli army bulldozer, but her e-mails home are still starting arguments -- in London, where her writings have been transformed into a hit play; in New York, where a bid to stage that play has stalled amid controversy; and in Corrie's native Pacific Northwest, where activists plan demonstrations, and another play, in coming days.

Some might say this town is run by a bunch of puppets. So perhaps it was only fitting for Peter Schumann to stage a social protest by bringing a bunch of puppets to town. No Kermit the Frog and Elmo here; Schumann's puppets are a grotesque lot. They include Uncle Fatso, a huge and distorted Uncle Sam; a gigantic silver-headed, sword-bearing monster that Schumann calls the Great Warrior; a flowing blue figure entitled the Mother Embracer; and a gangly 12-foot-high "Skeleton Horse."

Of all the companies to have appeared in this sprawling populist picnic that was the L.A. Festival, few worked their way into our hearts and minds as unself-consciously as the Bread and Puppet Theater of Vermont. That group's final show, "The Uprising of the Beast," took place over the weekend in a giant hangar at the Santa Monica Air Center before a sold-out audience of more than 1,000 people.

There is no bread, but there are plenty of puppets in "Metropolitan Indian Report," a grim and evocative look at America's outcasts, by the Bread and Puppet Theatre. This opening presentation of the group's Los Angeles Festival engagement plays at UCLA's Little Theatre through tonight. It's appropriate that this piece lacks the bread-baking and eating that occur at Bread and Puppet's big outdoor pageants in Vermont. For "Metropolitan Indian Report" is about people who don't have much to eat.

With a single flip of a generator switch on Sunday, Somali technicians at the weather-beaten and bullet-pocked Afgoi Wellfields did something extraordinary. They turned on the water supply for the first time in months to gutted, war-torn Mogadishu, Somalia's capital and home to more than a million desperate, hungry Somalis. But that wasn't the story. That simple act merely climaxed a saga as bizarre as it is sublime in its narrative of today's Somalia.

The live art-song recital is an endangered species. Sure, we get the occasional operatic superstar in an intimate mood. But the song specialists are in short supply, while their audience may be verging on extinction. The recordings, however, keep appearing, which means that someone is buying them. A small, encouraging sign. The kind of mixed-bag song recital--several composers, styles and languages--that used to be a concert-hall commonplace is offered by tenor Vinson Cole.

At the outermost edge of Somalia's prolonged anarchy, famine and clan warfare, there is, for the first time in more than two years, a police force in Belet Huen. The city also has a clinic, several schools and a newly appointed Somali construction team that soon will break ground for a jail, a station house, a courtroom and more schools.