About Heart Fire

Announcing a new speech and drama initiative inspired by the work of Rudolf Steiner, 

Heart Fire Centre for Speech and Drama

Situated in proximity to Pacifica College of Eurythmy, Heart Fire is based in Samford Valley, Queensland and is the initiative of Nicole Ostini, Katrina Stowe and Dawn Langman. Dawn’s life work has been to research and develop an integrated speech and acting methodology based on Rudolf Steiner’s approach to the art of Speech and Michael Chekhov’s, also Anthroposophically inspired, art of acting. Nicole and Katrina are both graduates of the 4-year training developed by Dawn Langman since her arrival back in Australia in 1995. They are both performers and experienced teachers at primary, secondary and adult levels and have been working together with Dawn, over several years now, to lay the foundation for a full and part time training and an artistic ensemble that will continue the research into and development of the integrated speech and acting methodology.

Over the next years we are planning a series of introductory workshops that will provide opportunities for teachers and performers, intending or established, to experience the richness and transformative and health bestowing benefits of this approach. We are also working towards the possibility of a 4-year full-time training sometime in the future.

Introductory workshop

This workshop will be held at Samford Valley Steiner School just outside of Brisbane on Friday evening 15^th, Saturday 16^th and Sunday morning 17^th March 2024. Please see accompanying flyer.

Dawn Langman’s account of Heart Fire’s Methodology

 The Heart Fire Centre for Speech and Drama is a fully integrated speech and acting methodology that has arisen out of many years of research into the impulse given by Rudolf Steiner for a renewal of the performing arts of the Word: drama, storytelling and poetry recital.

This impulse has been served by many pioneers over the years. One of the challenges that has faced all of us called to this work has been to develop an acting methodology that could seamlessly integrate with the groundbreaking work of Marie Steiner and her pupils to incarnate a renewal of the art of speech. Called Sprachgestaltung (in English, Speech Formation or Creative Speech) it trains the speaker to channel the divine creative activity of the macrocosmic beings of the stars and planets as it manifests through the sounds of language, the consonants and vowels.

Initially the acting side of the process relied on the already existing talent and /or professional experience of those who first trained with Marie Steiner. The demands of the speech work in those early years were so huge and all-consuming in themselves that the need for a fully articulated acting process equally grounded in the spiritual scientific lawfulness that Anthroposophy provides was not immediately clear. However, in recent years the further evolution of the speech work and the potential that it has to make a contribution to the wider culture, has been challenged by the lack of such a process.

Over the lifetime of my own work and search for answers to these questions, including an initial mainstream speech and acting training followed by my deep immersion in the art of Speech Formation, I was fortunate to discover and train in the acting methodology developed by the great Russian actor Michael Chekhov. He is acknowledged as one of the great actors, and teachers of acting, of the twentieth century. It was his destiny to function in the mainstream world of film and theatre and to translate the spiritual lawfulness of Anthroposophy into language and processes that could inspire and school the actors’ artistic striving whether or not they were consciously in search of the spiritual dimension of their art. His achievement at this level has meant that it has only been more recently acknowledged how deeply his work was embedded in the spiritual scientific principles of Rudolf Steiner.

It was not in Chekhov’s destiny to master the art of Speech Formation. It was his work to lay the foundation of a spiritually scientific acting process. However, he fully recognized and spoke about the role of both speech formation and eurythmy in developing capacities that actors and artists of the spoken word will need for theatre to fulfil its function in the future. In ways appropriate to our evolving present consciousness, it must be able to reveal the spiritual realities at work within our human destinies and evolution, explore the mystery of ‘why we are here and why we suffer’.  (Olga’s final speech from The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov.)

The Three Streams:

The Heart Fire methodology consists fundamentally of a systematic exploration of each of the three streams of work that makes possible their thorough integration at each level of the process.   

Chekhov’s spiritual/psycho/physical acting methodology: Chekhov’s psycho-physical exercises attune our body/soul/ instrument to be an organ of perception and expression that provides a healthy basis in movement and gesture for accessing the emotional life of the actor and the revelations of the soul and spirit as they manifest in drama, poetry and story.

Speech Formation/ Creative Speech: An exploration of the consonants, vowels, rhythms and other elements of language, leads to the initial experience that words are not just agreed abstract symbols that carry information to our brains but have the power to create events and awaken and refine our deepest life of thought and feeling. Further training transforms us step by step into conscious co- creators with the spiritual powers, through whose Word we and all things are created.   

Eurythmy: Through this art of movement the basic elements of speech eurythmy deepen and intensify our work with vowels and consonants. As we progress further, we are introduced to the cosmic gestures that reveal the inner life of the macrocosmic beings of the stars and planets who so intimately weave into the evolving consciousness of human beings as expressed through drama, poetry and story.

The integration of these streams enriches the artistic striving of actors, storytellers and reciters by providing an objective path to dimensions of reality not otherwise accessible. 

Please pass this information on to anyone who you think may be interested.

For further information

Nicole Ostini or Katrina Stowe