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The Perils of Mr. Punch Plays June 4

EAST CRAFTSBURY – “The Perils of Mr. Punch” will be presented Sunday, June 4, at 4 p.m., at the East Craftsbury Presbyterian Church by Modern Times Theater.

This is the one and only Punch and Judy, presented live, and updated for the 21st century.

Modern Times Theater has been adapting and updating Punch and Judy puppet shows, creating vaudeville acts, and writing original novelty songs for over a decade. They pursue a divergent model of art making, creating venues in unlikely locations, and revitalizing the historic, run-down, and defunct, and working in populist theater forms that reinvents classic American entertainment.

Co-founders Rose Friedman and Justin Lander are a husband and wife duo, producers for Vermont Vaudeville and alumni of the Bread and Puppet Theater. Parents themselves, they strive to present quality entertainment that the whole family can enjoy.

The show is a melodrama of small proportions, a low-tech old-time spectacle, as entertaining today as it was 300 years ago.

The hand puppets are created from up-cycled designer trash and performed in an eccentric itinerant puppet stage. The program is rounded out with live music played on a variety of instruments, from the cornet to the bicycle pump.

This program is sponsored by the J.W. Simpson Memorial Library, and made possible by a grant from the NEK Fund of the Vermont Community Foundation. The venue is located at 1773 East Craftsbury Road.

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