An unusual protest hits D.C.: Elmos with angst : Upset over Washington’s spending priorities? Join the Bread and Puppet Theater in an offbeat march on the Capitol.

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.”

These creatures are staples in the Bread and Puppet Theater, a socially conscious theater troupe from the socially conscious state of Vermont. The troupe--nine puppeteers and countless puppets--arrived in Washington in a rickety old school bus painted in psychedelic hues. One morning last week, they planted themselves on a large expanse of green about 100 yards from one of the least psychedelic places in America, the Capitol.

In a city where the standard work uniform is a suit of gray or blue, Schumann and his crew were impossible to miss. The puppeteers wore knit caps and long hair and goatees, and dressed all in white. “If you wear black you just look like a bunch of beatniks, which we sometimes do anyway,” explained Joseph Gresser, who joined Bread and Puppet four years ago.

Schumann, the theater’s 62-year-old founder, was equally distinctive in tattered black top hat and coat, thrown loosely over a faded white shirt and khaki pants. He came to this country from Germany in 1961, and has been using art as a form of social protest ever since. “We were disgusted with the fancy art scene in New York,” he says. “We wanted to make street art.”

In Schumann’s lexicon, the “we” is royal. “It was me . . .,” he says. They started on the lower East Side of New York, railing against rats and other unsavory conditions of apartment life. They favored garbage cans as props. “They have these nice-sized garbage cans in New York, metal cans,” he said. “So it was garbage can theater, pretty much.”

These days, Schumann is headquartered in Glover, Vt., a tiny burg near the Canadian border. He ferries his troupe--which fluctuates in size from a handful to several dozen--from city to city, rustling up locals to participate in his puppet protests. He has found, over the years, no shortage of topics, from the Vietnam War to the World Bank to U.S. policy in Bosnia.

What jumped out at him on this particular blustery morning in the nation’s capital was that America is still spending oodles on defense while at the same time cutting back social programs. It is a familiar complaint in Washington these days, as welfare reform takes hold. But alas, it was not compelling enough to generate the hundreds of volunteers Schumann had hoped would parade his puppets through the streets of Capitol Hill.

Indeed, only about two dozen local would-be puppet masters turned out to man (or woman, as the case may be) the Great Warrior and the Mother Embracer and all the rest. “It’s quite small,” said a disappointed Maria Schumann, Peter’s 29-year-old daughter. “The last parade we did was in New York City for Halloween. We had 200 people.”

But Washington on a weekday is not New York on Allhallows Eve. Bill Dyer, a 55-year-old peace activist watching from the sidelines, could have told the Schumanns that.

“You always see the same people at these things,” Dyer complained. “You’ll get a hard-core band of people. . . . Sometimes labor unions will show, but other than that, it’s slim pickings.”

The mood picked up a bit when a jolly man with a bespectacled red face and curly beard appeared, introducing himself as “Ben.” This was Ben Cohen, the co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, which, like Bread and Puppet Theater, makes its home in Vermont.

“I’m here,” Ben offered, “because the country is giving the Pentagon more than it ever asked for when it’s cutting programs for kids in school, for health care, for women with children. It ain’t right.” He then donned the Uncle Fatso costume. It fit.

Soon Jerry Greenfield, Ben’s other half, showed up with a small entourage of public relations people, fresh from a Greenpeace press conference to promote chlorine-free paper.

One who did not show but was supposed to was Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which every year offers an alternative budget. Frank was busy on the House floor. He ducked out briefly to look for the Bread and Puppet crowd on the steps of the Capitol. That is where they had intended to gather, until the Capitol police forced them elsewhere.

At 12:45 p.m., the puppet parade began. The Skeleton Horse and the others were in perfect alignment. Schumann led the charge, in red and white striped suit, on eight-foot stilts, blowing two trumpets at once. Police escorts tried furiously to redirect traffic. Finally, it was time to ask the question Schumann had come so far to ask.

“Ladies and Gentlemen,” he bellowed, “where does all your money go?”