Registration Now Open For West Coast Collaborative Puppetry and Storytelling Arts Conference 20173/12/2017  Cultivating Moral Imagination Through Puppetry and Storytelling West Coast Collaborative Puppetry and Storytelling Arts Conference 2017 July 27 - 31, 2017 Location: Olympia Waldorf School, Olympia, Washington, United States ~ Hosted by Ripples Puppetry of Olympia, Washington "What the free spirit needs ... in order to be effective is moral imagination." ~ Rudolf Steiner in The Philosophy of Freedom "Puppetry is one of the most important therapeutic impulses ... a stimulus of the highest order of healing forces." ~ Michaela Glöckler
Dear Friends of Puppetry! This gathering of puppeteers is meant to link to the East Coast puppetry conferences which have been led by Janene Ping and others. It has long been a dream of Janene’s to have West Coast gatherings alternating with East Coast gatherings. Janene has been working with us in imagining and planning the conference and will join us as a presenter and participant in the conference. I was fortunate to be able to attend last year’s conference in Hawthorne Valley. It was extremely inspiring and delightful! I am happy to be a part of the planning and hosting of our West Coast conference! Please contact me with questions or if you are interested in presenting a puppet show of your own at the conference! With warm greetings, Marjorie Rehbach Registration
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West Coast Collaborative Puppetry Arts Conference 2017 / July 27 - 31, 2017Presentations / Update Grades 1- 8 Puppetry Curriculum for Waldorf Education
Presentation Description This presentation will give an overview of the full puppetry grades curriculum program developed since 1998 at the Sierra Waldorf School. This puppetry curriculum draws from Waldorf Education’s grades curriculum, the Waldorf handwork curriculum and the history of puppetry as it compliments and relates to the upper grades span of history covered in their curriculum studies. Each grade makes a different style puppet in a block period of time and puts on a performance drawn either directly from that particular grade’s curriculum or is designed to complement it. Elements of performance, speech and drama are brought as well as the enlivening movement and gesturing of the puppet. The puppetry curriculum is designed to broaden and build skill-wise and experience-wise through the grades as the students’ capacities unfold and grow. Written assignments of script, poetry, and research reports are brought to certain upper grades and are integrated with their class teacher’s assignments and that particular grade’s studies. The puppetry projects are designed to deepen an already rich Waldorf grades curriculum and build upon the kindergarten puppetry performances the students received. West Coast Collaborative Puppetry Arts Conference 2017 / July 27 - 31, 2017Workshops / UpdateWorkshop: Bio-dynamic Storytelling with Nancy Mellon Cultivating the art and science of storytelling, like home-grown food, is even more essential today. The wi-fi wilds of indigestible images, data, messaging and violent “games” are not as easy to remove as toxins and weeds. New tools are needed and practice is required. Participants in this workshop will discover enlivening methods and a pharmacopeia of plot-lines and characters for composting and transforming these and other challenging dilemmas at school, and at home. Please bring an unlined notebook and colored pencils.
Nancy Mellon has been encouraging storytelling as a healing art around the globe for more than thirty years. Her workshops and courses brim with creativity. She is a psychotherapist and former Waldorf teacher whose books are cherished in many countries. Nancy is the author of Storytelling and the Art of Imagination, Storytelling with Children, The Knottles, and Body Eloquence, which won the US Books’ Best Books Award in the field of Alternative Medicine. To learn more see her website. More ... West Coast Collaborative Puppetry Arts Conference 2017 / July 27 - 31, 2017Workshops / Update Workshop: The Art of the Themed Multi-Pocket Puppet Story Apron with Jennifer Aguirre  The themed multi- pocket puppet story apron is an interactive visual storytelling presentation where children point to a pocket and the puppet inside comes delightfully to life through story, verse, or song, cultivating a sense of awe, wonder, and joy in the natural and fairytale worlds. The apron serves as a wearable stage and the theme to the apron can be anything. Participants in this class will make a themed pocket story apron and some wool fleece puppets to compliment it. We will explore the wide range of ideas and ways to bring this creative, interactive and portable stage alive to the delight of audiences. Please bring a short poem or nursery rhyme (preferably memorized) that compliments your theme ideas along with a sewing kit.  Jennifer Aguirre lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Sonora, Ca. She has been teaching and developing a grades puppetry curriculum at the Sierra Waldorf School since 1998 and bringing puppet performances to the kindergarten(s) and festival life of the school since 1993. She has been performing her 8 themed puppet pocket story aprons in a variety of community wide venues for over 20 years and enjoys teaching the puppetry arts to adults. She lives in a restored Goldrush era home with her husband and where they raised their two grown children.
More ... West Coast Collaborative Puppetry Arts Conference 2017 / July 27 - 31, 2017Workshops / Update Workshop: The Silk Marionette ~ Exploring Ethereal Form and Gesture with Janene PingThe 5-string Silk Marionette brings an elegance of soul expression that embraces the grace of etheric form and gesture. Please join us for this workshop where we will study archetype in fairy tale theater and craft a silk marionette using techniques of plant dying, wool sculpture and weight resist to refine the possibilities of movement for the puppet. Will will also work with performance art and set design for deepening the artistry of puppet show production. Participants are asked to identify with a fairytale character that they would like to create and to bring a drawing pad, pencils, and a sewing kit for their conference participation.  Janene Ping has been a Waldorf early childhood educator since 1992. She is the creator and artistic director of the Magical Puppet Tree Theatre supporting storytelling and puppetry arts for almost as long. ... She is a faculty member at Sophia's Hearth in New Hampshire, teaches kindergarten at the Hawthorne Valley Waldorf School, and has led courses in puppetry arts for educators throughout the Northeast and in Europe. For more information contact .
More ...  A Maypole Dream by Marjorie Rehbach and Christine Nietert
An Illustrated Story for Young and Old When the bright colors of spring failed to appear after winter one year, the fairies wanted to find them and bring them back to earth. How did they manage? Walking through the woods, one spring morning, the story of “A Maypole Dream” appeared, as a gift, to the author. It is a tale which brings gratitude for the nature spirits back into our celebrations of the miracles of the seasons. The book contains this story and beautiful illustrations, and can be enjoyed by young and old – all those who love the weaving colored ribbons of the Maypole dance! More ... by Dr. Helmut von Kugelgen - International Waldorf Kindergarten Association  The struggle for the legal security of a freely chosen, humane education in the pre-school age demands spiritual decisions from which parents and teachers can no longer hold back. Independently from the success of these efforts, however, we must not neglect the concrete questions of the creation of a counterbalance against a civilization inimical to children.
Whatever can be done to offer children enlivening soul nourishment must be begun. In the late fall, children are more and thore withdrawn from nature - in so far as they can reach it all - and are brought into the house and indoor occupations. It is also the time for the first thoughts about Christmas and Christmas presents, so the educational experience should lead to understanding with the heart and to action. How incongruous it must have seemed in the year 1917 in the tragic last phases of the first World War and in the beginning of his open political and social activity, that Rudolf Steiner should have been concerned with the establishment of a marionette theater. But he devoted his full attention to this theater.  The puppetry impulse is one of the most important art therapy impulses for the coming century. Why? Because with hand and string puppets something is possible that cannot be achieved in theater or in movies, namely that the spiritual and soul expressions of the players are completely in the service of the images that are created with the help of the puppets.
Fairy tales, plays and everyday scenes that are presented in this innocent fashion come to life in a way that allows the onlooker, especially the child, to take in the content consciously, without the overpowering soul impact of real theater drama. The spiritual image content appears in the foreground and the imaginative capacity receives rich nourishment while at the same time the constitution of the child is guarded from impressions that are too forceful and that would disturb the flow of images. The marionette play is, for adults, a conscious, and for children, an unconscious, education in imaginative vision, and therefore it is an activator of the highest order of the forces of self-healing. The marionette and puppet theater is on top of everything, the only effective alternative to television and the multi-media culture of our day. I want to hereby warmly speak out on behalf of the Goetheanum in support of encouraging a worldwide puppet theatre culture, and beg everyone that reads this to consider how they can financially and otherwise contribute to this goal. ~ Michaela Glöckler, M.D., Director, Medical Section, Anthroposophical Society in Rundbrief Michaeli 1999 no. 37  Cultivating Moral Imagination Through Puppetry ~Hosted by Ripples Puppetry of Olympia, Washington
"The human being produces concrete mental pictures from the sum of his ideas chiefly by means of the imagination. Therefore what the free spirit needs in order to realize his ideas, in order to be effective, is moral imagination. This is the source of the free spirit's action." ~ Rudolf Steiner, The Philosophy of Freedom Dear Friends of Puppetry! This gathering of puppeteers is meant to link to the East Coast puppetry conferences which have been led by Janene Ping and others. It has long been a dream of Janene’s to have West Coast gatherings alternating with East Coast gatherings. Janene has been working with us in imagining and planning the conference and will join us as a presenter and participant in the conference. I was fortunate to be able to attend last year’s conference in Hawthorne Valley. It was extremely inspiring and delightful! I am happy to be a part of the planning and hosting of our West Coast conference! Please contact me with questions or to let me know if you are interested in attending! Registration will open in February and the cost will be $425 (USD) for the 5 days. Please use the pre-registration form if you are interested in receiving updates and registration information as it becomes available. Presentations
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Please let us know if you or your group would like to bring a puppet show to share! (You will receive a discount on your conference fee for this!) ~ Marjorie Rehbach www.ripples.us  Event Type: Children
Age Group(s): Children 3-6 years, Children grades 1-3 Date: 1/27/2017 Start Time: 10:30 AM End Time: 11:00 AM Description: Ripples Puppet Theatre presents a puppet show based on the Ukrainian folktale, "The Mitten". This charming story about animals sharing a home in a lost mitten is accompanied by live music and storytelling. Sponsored by the Friends of the Tumwater Timberland Library. Library: Tumwater Timberland Library Map to the Tumwater Library |
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