Local accordion-and-drums duo (turned trio, turned quartet) Sweets & Hots opened the evening with a short set of lively music before Bread & Puppet sauntered on stage. Dirt-Cheap Opera was a one-hour revue featuring Bertolt Brecht's story and lyrics set to Kurt Weil's music, complemented by the artistic vision of Bread & Puppet's founder/director Peter Schumann. Schumann had workshopped the show with his company at their Vermont farm in 1998, and then again ten years later with the current cast and the show's original flat cardboard characters and newsprint cantastoria (all of which had only improved with age after a decade of ripening inside a barn). The company's members shifted between playing in the band and talking on the personae of whichever cahracter was handy, bending genders and blowing apart expectations.

After the show all seemed fine and rosy, until Bread & Puppet received a cease and desist order from the legal custodians of Threepenny Opera on which the Dirt-Cheap Opera is more than based. Through the magic of lawyers, a deal was cut and Bread & Puppet were allowed to finish their tour, knowing that they'd not likely be performing the show again anytime soon thereafter.

See Bread & Puppet's website here and find them elsewhere Puppet Uprising's archive.
Hear Sweets & Hots' music here and read about other Puppet Uprising shows they've played in 2006 and 2007.
Half of Bread & Puppet's "No January Vacation" faction also toured with The Boxcutter Cabaret, which Puppet Uprising hosted in 2008.