The Sand Queen Ceremony, 2006
Fort Lewis College
Dreamtime Festival

The Sand Queens Ceremony is a participatory ritual that Penumbra creates on an annual basis. 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.

Each year she focuses here blessing on a candle to harness the power of that type of dream. Through ritualistic movement and sound a small piece of her world is manifest to be shared with the audience.

The focus of this performance was 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.