Highlight of Autumn Events
Juniper Tree School of Story and Puppetry Arts developed out of many years of outreach teaching. We offer a variety of workshops, professional development courses, and weekend events. The focus of the school is a 3-part certificate training in Storytelling and Puppet Theater that consists of three 10 day summer intensives, with self designed practical practice projects to work on through the year after each summer session.
The 3 part summer training course June 25- July 5 in Viroqua, Wisconsin, our first Midwest location is in it’s 2nd year 2008. Viroqua is a beautiful rural arts town in peaceful rolling hills – a perfect spot for artistic work.
Part one - Educational CLICK
Part two - Artistic CLICK
Part three - Therapeutic CLICK
The New 8 week full time professional puppetry/apprenticeship training will be held Spring 2009 on Vancouver Island.
To Apply Click Here to Contact Suzanne Down
Please contact us for an application package and for further practical information. This is a serious intensive training and welcomes those ready to work inwardly and outwardly with joy, enthusiasm, and will.
There is a three year commitment for the summer training. The process of unfolding artistic and therapeutic ability is a time process and requires working with the skills from each summer session during the year in between our meetings. Each participant designs a puppet project for each focus that is suited to their life situation and interests. It is a practice and deepening of each summer's new skills.
When participants do this, the steps forward in depth of skill and healing quality is profound. We have individual reviews at the end of each summer session.
The 8 week full time course allows time to delve deeper and more expansively in the curriculum.
This term long study incorporates all of the 3 year summer training and much more. We will work much further with story development and creation, puppet design and construction, story voice work, and weekly artistic therapeutic projects.
The 3 part summer training:
Educational/Pedagogic Puppetry Part 1
This first summer focuses on a wide range of simple puppets and presentation techniques that are effective, artistic, wonder-full, and meaningful to the inner needs and stages of development of the child.
A strong focus is on early childhood puppetry with attention also to birth – 3 years, grade school, and high school puppet ideas to inspire further exploration. This session lays the building stones for the later artistic and therapeutic focuses.
We begin to enliven the simplest puppets with a sense of delight and their healing ability.
Puppet styles and curriculum we work with are:
The art of the finger puppet with 2 dimensional wool felt and 3 dimensional needle felted puppets.
Table puppet theater and lap puppet theater
Stagecraft
Small hand and rod puppets
Visual storytelling techniques
Storyscapes - hand felted storyboard storytelling
The puppet story apron
Storytelling voice work for puppetry
The art and wisdom of nursery rhymes
Musical accompaniment with song and simple instruments
Puppet making and design
Wet felting storyscapes
Needle felting puppets
Wool dyeing techniques
Story creation
Business - visualization to expand your work, creating flyers, writing proposals, grants, and money matters!
Movement
Artistic/Performance
Artistic/Performance - Part 2
The fairy tale/folk tale and marionette theater
When we tell a story or perform with puppets we are creating an imaginative world. There is a partnership with the audience whose own imagination meets ours. Together we create magic. In this part 2 session we work on the elements that create this visual imagination.
The first and perhaps most important step is the inner awakening of wonder and archetype in ourselves. Once we connect with this, it will imbue all we do.
Key artistic areas we work on:
Storytelling voice for fairy tale and longer story
Creating the story space
Story ritual - beginning and end
Marionette manipulation skills - physical activity - standing, sitting, walking, turning, and fairy tale actions - chopping, fishing, spinning etc.
Working with the archetypes to enliven the puppets as in age ranges, character, temperaments, soul mood, etc.
Music for puppet productions,
Simple lighting techniques
Wisdom of fairy tales
Staging and color
The silk marionette (5 string) will be our focus puppet in exploring puppet performance from beginning to end, for an all age audience. A series of artistic puppet exercises will build the skills, leading to solo and small group performance projects of fairy and folk tales, which culminate this session.
We will dye silk using a multicolored over-dyeing method and use this silk to create a human silk marionette character and an animal marionette.
We will learn the basics of stringing a marionette for flowing movement.
The business of puppetry curriculum continues.
Movement
Therapeutic Puppetry - Part 3
The therapeutic focus will bring together therapeutic fundamentals of understanding human conditions, then we will look practically at these indications to explore how puppetry can be a therapeutic tool. We will work with a therapist in this session.
Some of the key fundamentals introduced will be:
The 'curative clock' - the 12-fold nature of human condition
The 12 senses especially the four foundational senses
The temperaments and the 'four virtues' of puppetry
Introduction to 'color and light' puppetry
The puppeteers hand and it's relation to the body
The transformational story
The protection story
Through hands-on exercises, students will work on how practical therapeutic puppetry can begin to be applied in real situations with a variety of puppet types.
The larger rod and hand puppet will also be a main focus as it is the most connected to the healing heart forces.
Students will be introduced to colored shadow puppetry and the powerful transformational effect of colored light puppets in movement.
Participants will construct a large rod puppet with tremendous movement ability and colored shadow puppets.
Note: This is intended to be a rich introduction to therapeutic puppetry. It does not qualify you to be a puppet therapist, yet you can utilize these healing techniques in classroom and other situations.
The 8 Week Full Time Professional Training/Apprenticeship:
Curriculum
The 8 week (one school term) full time professional training in storytelling and puppet theater will be held on Vancouver Island. The curriculum will include all of the 3 part summer content as well as working fore fully in storytelling, individual weekly projects, and weekly story writing.
Each participant will develop at least 8 stories and develop them into pedagogical, artistic, and therapeutic puppet presentations. This will include puppet design and construction. Some of them will be very simple stories, some more focused therapeutically, and some longer stories for all age audience with more complex staging. We will go to different nature sites to inspire our story creation on a regular basis.
We will also devote time to puppetry as a bridge to community and world issues, i.e. the puppets for peace project, puppets for world change project, and puppetry for underserved children. Contact us for an information package.
If you are interested to receive our 3 summer or 8 week full time training information package, please contact Suzanne at suzanne@junipertreepuppets.com