a golden thread....

My Golden Thread workshops will be drawing on what I have learned in over thirty years of experience working with traditional stories, bringing them to life for a variety of audiences. In the course of this work I've studied a variety of writers and thinkers. Historians of religion, anthropologists, Jungian scholars and whenever possible listening to the voices of the indigenous- those who grew up in the old ways.

By now my approach to traditional tales is deeply intuitive. When I enter a sacred area, like that of myth, I truly feel I am entering a very particular world with certain rules and possibilities of expression. The same is true with fairy tales, animal fables and legends each have their own rules and their secrets are best unlocked by following a certain path.  Their classifications are important only so much as they are sign posts pointing the way to the proper approach. When you revive a fairy tale you do not treat it in the same way as a myth. You would not approach a queen in the same way as a shepherdess!

Now I want to help others discover the unbelievable depth that can be found in these old tales- thus this series of workshops called The Golden Thread: Finding Meaning in Traditional Tales. Each workshop series focuses on a different kind of traditional tale. The first journeys have been into the landscape of fairy tales. To deepen the work with fairy tales I have taken cues from dream analysis, amplification of symbols, Michael Chekov's gestural work and cultural explorations. The tellings that have resulted from the classes so far has been extraordinary.
The newest version of the workshop will begin this October 7th, 2015 on Wednesday evenings. The Golden Thread: Finding Meaning in Traditional Tales: Fairy tales