Puppetry Conference

Cultivating Moral Imagination Through Puppetry

West Coast Collaborative Puppetry Arts Conference 201
July 27 - 31, 2017
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Location: Olympia Waldorf School, Olympia, Washington, United States

~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

• Therapeutic Puppetry
• Working with Archetypes in Tales
• What is Meant by "Moral Imagination" and its Relevancy for Today
• Puppetry for Different Ages

 
Workshops

• Dyeing fabrics with natural dyes (for all)
• Making puppets: Four workshops will each create a different style of puppet which you can take home. You will be in one ongoing workshop for the conference. We will put together a short performance/sharing, for the last day.

 
Performances

• The 7th Grade from Olympia Waldorf School will present their marionette play: "Vasilisa, the Beautiful."

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
​

The Healing Strength of Puppetry

"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.

​~ Michaela Glöckler, M.D., Director, Medical Section, Anthroposophical Society in Rundbrief Michaeli 1999 no. 37