The Parsifal Project: a community arts project
2022-06-13 - 2025-05-04 | Living Arts Centre, Mt Barker School, 27 Sims Road, Mount Barker, SA, 5251
The Parsifal Project

The Parsifal Project is a community project that aspires towards a contemporary envisioning of the famous medieval legend, one that recontextualises the Parsifal legend for a modern multicultural audience.
What is it about?
Writers, poets, philosophers and artists tell us that myths and legends hold spiritual insights into the sacred wisdom of past cultures, but what about the spiritual insights we need to navigate our current world? Drawing on the cultural heritages we bring with us, the Parsifal Project seeks find meaningful resonance between this medieval myth and contemporary intergenerational audiences.
Using the talents of a diverse cast and a script written by playwright Peter Oswald, the project aims to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the Parsifal legend in light of Anthroposophy, as a cosmopolitan Michaelic impulse and as a metaphor for modern human development. The story is our future; if so, its mythic themes could be critical to today’s youth, to all of us.
Whether your interest is in the spiritual foundations of the legend, the literature, creative writing or performing, there is something here for anyone and everyone fascinated by the whole collection of Grail legends and its interpretations, medieval or modern, book or film.
Timeline for the project
The project has five stages highlighting different arts and media:

June – July 2022: Parsifal Unpacked
Completed. Explored the original story through performance, literary text and thematic discussion.
September – November 2022: Parsifal Reimagined
Completed. A series of writing workshops where we reimagine the story through the lens of current cultural perspectives.
January 2023 – November 2023 : Parsifal Rescripted
Ongoing script development in conjunction with performance-based creative development intensives with on-the-floor exploration on the themes explored in Stages 1 and 2.
February 2024 – February 2025: Parsifal Reinterpreted
Auditions, eurythmy and music workshops from February. Rehearsals begin in April 2024, using the script based on Parsifal Rescripted.
April -May 2025: The Parsifal Project performance
Saturday 26 April at 5.30 pm ACST
Saturday 3rd May at at 5.30 pm ACST
Sunday 4th May at 2.30 pm ACST
Venue: Living Arts Centre, Mount Barker Waldorf School, Mt Barker, SA

Project Director: Jo-anne Sarre, Artistic Director of Ink Pots Arts
Jo-anne Sarre has worked in the performing arts sector as a freelance director, actor, storyteller, playwright and educator since her four-year Speech and Drama training at The Harkness Studio, Sydney in 1986. She has a Diploma of Teaching (Primary 1980-1982), a Diploma of Creative Speech and Drama (The Harkness Studio in conjunction with The Goetheanum School of Spiritual Science 1983-1986) and first-class Honours in Drama (Flinders University 2009). Other trainings include MICHA in the US and various Michael Chekhov practitioners in the UK and Europe (1997-2009).
Jo-anne has performed in local, national and international arenas as an independent performing artist including as a freelance storyteller, with the Aphaia Eurythmy Group (Poetry Recitation), and as an actor with Ink Pot Theatre, The Rose Theatre Company and Portal Productions UK (The Soul’s Awakening). During her career, she has trained Steiner/Waldorf teachers across Australia (Rudolf Steiner College, Sheoak College), in the UK (Emerson College), India and China. This includes supporting teachers in their own artistic development in poetry recitation, storytelling, acting and directing as well as assisting in classrooms, directing plays etc with both primary and high school students. In 2016, she was also Assistant Voice Coach at Flinders University Drama Centre with Dawn Langman.
As co-founder of Ink Pot Theatre (the professional touring company) and founding Artistic Director of Ink Pot Arts Inc (a community arts not-for-profit), she has been actively engaged in bringing high-quality theatre as a catalyst for personal transformation and community cultural development inspired by Anthroposophy.

Feature image credit: Seamus McArdle
Photo credit: Jo-anne Sarre

“Most societies have come to define themselves by their historical myths and national narratives. We are, who we say we are… People grow up believing they live within a story … what is the story we believe we are living within? Where is our narrative going? “
Prof. David Blight, 2009

Working with Steiner's Nature Mood Sketches
2024-08-31 15:00 - 2024-11-23 17:00 (Australia/Sydney) | Online
Painted Space Studio
presents
The Seven School (Friedwart) Sketches series

This fortnightly online course introduces you to Rudolf Steiner’s approach to painting and his understanding of how the formative forces shape and move the world around us through his own pastel sketches. The course uses the wet-on-dry veiling technique or pastels, if preferred.
The Seven School (or Friedwart) Sketches were first given to Waldorf teachers as part of Steiner’s new impulse for understanding both Art and Nature, to help students explore invisible yet objective laws of Nature. The series leads us from the archetypal nature moods of sunrise and sunset through the four elements to the human world, culminating in a Madonna and Child motif.
What are the Training Sketches?
Theses sketches are part of a comprehensive portfolio known as the Training Sketches for the Artists. Along with The Nine Training Sketches (Nature Moods) and the Goetheanum epochs motifs, they form an important part of this portfolio.
But these sketches are not images of external natural events; they refer to acts that are effective in nature and human, says Christiane Haid, head of the Visual Arts Section at the Goetheanum. She believes that working with the creative forces in and around us can become the starting point for facing tasks in healing the world.
Who is this course for?

For Steiner teachers, artists, art therapists and art students seeking to understand how the formative forces work in Nature and Human.

For anyone interested in the foundations of the anthroposophic approach to art, colour and painting. You do not need to be an experienced artist to enjoy this course.

This course is a core course of the Art as a Path of Schooling for the Soul training.
When is it?
3pm-5pm Saturdays AEST, 31 August-23 November 2024
Seven two-hour fortnightly sessions. Participants are expected to do some homework between classes. Edited recordings of the sessions are available post-class but live participation is preferred, unless your time zone makes this impossible.
Cost
$300 AUD/$205 USD
$305 AUD for PD certificate
Video recording included in the fee, available for private study.

Book here!

How to join the workshops
The Zoom link, payment details, a list of materials and suggested readings will be sent to you after booking.

Other Painted Space Studio workshop courses

For more information

Contact

‘…and in the creations of the artist t here will appear to us
the traces of his soul experience in the cosmos‘

Steiner

Feature image: Sunlit Tree by a Waterfall No. 6 © Fiona Campbell

A Conversation With Your Garden: Plant Observation And Drawing
2024-09-11 17:00 - 2024-11-20 18:30 | Online
Painted Space Studio
presents
A Series of Workshops on Goethean Observation and Nature Moods

Let’s prepare ourselves Spring!
Spring is the ideal time of year to turn our eyes to Nature and learn her secrets through Goethean observation, drawing and reflection. Spending time up close with Nature in the garden, a park, a local nature reserve or even just with a few pot plants on your balcony is both energising and healing.
(Of course, any time of the year in Nature is good, but Spring and Autumn have particular qualities of change and transformation especially suited to drawing and observation.)
What will we do?
Through the six online workshops, learn to see anew the wonder of your own garden. Each workshop leads us through a process of becoming ‘at home’ with Nature, from quiet contemplation, careful observation, and mood immersion, to sketching, colour work and reflection.
Learn the core stages of a phenomenological process and practice the different drawing/sketching techniques to take us through this process. Techniques include charcoal, pencil, paint and pastel. Participants keep a visual diary to document their discoveries and observations.
By getting up close with our garden in this way, the world around us becomes more alive – living and becoming.
What is Goethean phenomenology?
Goethean phenomenology (also known as Goethean observation) helps us develops new eyes for the world around us. It offers us another way of being in the world, one that brings us into a more participatory connection with Nature and ourselves. We learn to step into the world and feel at home with it.
Who is it for?

For Steiner teachers, artists, art therapists and art students seeking to understand how the formative forces work in Nature
For anyone interested in knowing more about Goethean phenomenology and how to practice it.

Suitable for all levels. You do not need to be an experienced artist to enjoy these workshops.
Video recordings included in the fee, available for private study.
When is it on?
5.00pm-6.30pm AEST, 11 September to 20 November 2024
How do I book?

Book here
Please complete the online form to book for this series of workshops. You will be sent the payment details and a list of suggested materials and readings after booking.
The Zoom link is sent one (1) day before the workshop begins.
More information
Find out more about this course and others from Painted Space or contact Fiona Campbell.

Oh, I who wish to grow, I look out, and inside me the tree grows.
Rainer Maria Rilke

Feature image: Ethereal Space of Plant Growth, Plate I, The Plant between Sun and Earth © Olive Whicher
