The theme of this year’s Puppet Play Conference was ‘Fear and Salvation’. It took place from Friday, January 23 till Sunday, January 25 (2026), in the Goetheanum and surrounded buildings in Dornach, Switzerland.

On Friday evening we saw a lovely anthroposophical puppetry play by Philipp Reubke and Fabienne Rigaud, about a dwarf (earth element, physically, melancholic temperament), a forest creature (water, ethereal, phlegmatic), a fairy (air, astral, sanguine) and a Kasper character (fire, the ‘I’, choleric), with a lot of instruments.

And there was an interesting lecture from Dr. Karin Michael about ‘Children on their way to courage’. It is important that they can find spiritual elements here on earth, like our beautiful stories and puppetry! The movement in a puppetry play leads to flexibility in their thinking and mobility in feeling, and helps them to incarnate well. 

There were four workshop groups we could choose from: Making a table puppet play together, with story, puppeteering and music, for young children / Speaking about emotions and making musical sounds by the theme of learning how to deal with fear / Making transparent images by a part of the Gilgamesh epos / Speech exercises about contrasts in fairy tale storytelling. On Sunday we saw a presentation of each group.

We began the days with some eurythmy exercises, there was a lecture from Micaela Sauber about metamorphoses in transparent images, and we saw three beautiful performances on stage: 1. ‘Wassilissa’, a tale told with transparent images. 2. ‘There's a knock at Wanja's door in the night’, a large puppet play scene with animals in winter. 3. ‘Snow white’, with storytelling and - of course - seven beautiful dwarfs! 

On Saturday evening there was an open stage for contributions of participants. We saw a beautiful wooden table theatre (something like a bigger ‘kamishibai’) with the Christmas story, paintings, singing and little woollen and paper table puppets. 

And I had an exhibition with puppets and houses about ‘Shelter stories for puppetry’, and a matching photo exhibition about puppets (animals and gnomes) that found a cosy and safe home in nature. I also gave a demonstration about what shelter stories or protection stories are, and why they are so important for young children to feel safe in their body and environment. I showed a little lap puppetry play with a handmade woollen mouse that found a soft and warm house when winter came. 

It was a wonderful puppetry conference, with engaged people (Waldorf teachers and puppeteers), a good program, lovely performances, and a lot of inspiration! If you ever have the chance to come to the Goetheanum, please do so! It is a really special place - the heart of anthroposophy - with a lot of things to visit (so come a few days earlier to look around). The next puppetry conference will be: April 9 – 11 (2027).