Modern Times Theater
Performance
HopStop Family Show: Modern Times Theater

The Perils of Mr. Punch

June 25, 2022

This event occurred as part of the 22/23 Youth & Families season. This is an archived view.

An absurdist delight featuring puppetry favorites Punch and Judy, presented live, and updated for the 21st century.

22/23 Youth & Families

Allow Mr. Punch to remove your bad mood and tickle four out of your five senses. Watch as Judy tames unruly plumbing while avoiding the jaws of the carnivore du jour! And, feast your eyes upon the diaper change that should not be!

It's a melodrama of epically small proportions so funny that you'll forget to take out your phone for at least the first half hour. The low-tech old-time spectacle is as entertaining to the masses of 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 show is hosted per tradition by a "bottler," the uku-lady Rose Friedman. Justin Lander, showman of the absurd, portrays all the characters. The program is rounded out with live music played on a variety of instruments, from the cornet to the bicycle pump.

Generously supported by the Jack & Dorothy Byrne Foundation.

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 radically divergent model of art making, creating venues in unlikely locations and revitalizing the historic, run-down and defunct. Working in populist theater forms, they seek to reinvent and reimagine 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.

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