The Sand Queen Ceremony, 2005-2006
Dreamtime Festival
Fort Lewis College
CREDITS

The Sand Queens Ceremony is a participatory ritual that I have produced in collaboration with Stacey Sotosky and LeAnn Brubaker. We have performed three cycles of the ceremony. The Sand Queen hails from the Land of Color. In her world dreams are sacred and are worshiped with ritual. There are seven dream candles. They are: In-Patna the Blood Candle of Nightmare Dreams, In-Prodon the Shadow Candle of Imageless Dreams, In-Fantas the Glamour Candle of Changeling Dreams, Celes the Center Candle of Dreams, Sha-Menra the Ancestor Candle of Dreams Past, Sha-Vena the Focus Candle of Awakened Dreaming, and Sha-Laru the Ever Ever After, Before Life, Earth.

In each cycle she chooses focus and develops a ceremony to harness the power of the dream contained within the appropriate candle. Through ritualistic movement and sound a small piece of her world is manifested and shared with the audience.

The focus of these performances were to use multimedia theater as a tool to create participatory ritual theatre. This is the first piece Penumbra has produced focusing on activating the audience thru ritual theatre. This dream blessing has the potential to change and grow with our company. We are striving to add another type of collaboration to our process with audience interaction and participation.