Samhain Ritual

2022-present
Bread and Puppet Theater
Glover, VT
ritual / participatory performance

The Samhain Ritual is an annual (since 2019) community gathering at Bread and Puppet Theater that weaves procession, song, dance, altar building, and fire into a participatory ceremony of remembrance. Drawing from Gaelic and Slavic traditions of honoring the dead at the turning of the seasons, the ritual brings together more than a hundred participants in an outdoor ceremony that moves through orchard, field, and forest.

I have co-hosted the ritual since 2022, alongside director Maria Schumann, contributing choreography, song, and facilitation alongside many volunteers who prepare the site and perform roles throughout the event. As dusk falls, lanterns and luminarias stretch across a vast field, guiding the procession’s path. Along the way, ritual acts and performance interludes unfold in shifting landscapes, deepening the collective experience of grief and remembrance. In the pine grove, participants build altars for their dead with food, flowers, moss, and stones, and offer songs, poems, or gestures.

The gathering culminates at the bonfire near the Bread House, where the community toasts the dead with water in cabbage leaves and shares hot soup, bread, and music. Often the evening closes with a fiddle sermon by Peter Schumann.

In 2025, the project will expand to include a week-long ritual apprenticeship leading up to the public gathering, deepening its role as a site of intergenerational practice and transmission.

Tags: Ritual / Ceremonial practice, Grief work, Participatory project, Social practice, Community engagement, Collaboration, Ecosomatics