Bring your speech to life!
“The whole of a human being, one’s significance and dignity, is bound up with speech.”
- Rudolf Steiner
The Steiner School of Speech Arts
is part of the Threefold Educational Community in beautiful Chestnut Ridge, New York. Our mission is to offer full-time, in-person artistic training in the art of Creative Speech (Speech Formation) as initiated by Rudolf and Marie Steiner.
Scroll down to learn more about Speech Arts and our faculty!
Creative Speech
The power of language goes beyond its ability to convey meaning.
The power of language goes beyond its ability to convey meaning. In the enjoyment of poetry we can experience that words are also color, gesture, and movement. The sounding word is not a finished thing, but a dynamic world in the very act of becoming. Each time we speak, we can take part in this “becoming” and in the life of the Logos – the primal, cosmic word that underlies all existence.
Creative Speech is a discipline devoted to this approach to the spoken word. It allows our speaking to be inspired by the rhythms, images, and music inherent in the word.
Introduced in the early 1900s by Rudolf Steiner in collaboration with Marie Steiner von-Sivers, Creative Speech has now found its way around the globe in the fields of performance, education, and therapy. It is an inspiration to many who seek personal growth through an artistic approach to the spoken word.
Performance
Creative Speech (Speech Formation) raises speech to consciousness.
We use our entire being to become more balanced, more whole. Our soul is engaged in a way that affects us and our audience profoundly. We breathe more deeply, more fully, which opens our soul, our relationship to the world around us, our life perspective. Creative Speech uses the forms, movements, colors, and beings of the sounds to paint imaginations. We work with the three styles of speech: epic, the speech of stories and epic poetry; lyric, the speech of poetry; and dramatic, the speech of stylized conversation. Rhythm is an integral part of conscious speech. Specific exercises are used to work with breath, articulation, speech gesture, and mood. With Creative Speech we find our true voice.
Speech has an essential, formative effect on children.
Education
Little attention is given to speech in the schools, yet it has an essential formative effect on the children. Students should develop a love for the miracle of language and learn to create in their speech the pictures that live so vividly in them. They need to learn to breathe fully for their health, to articulate well and to bring presence and color into their speech.
What a wealth of culture lies in the stories, poems and dramatic works of humanity! This, too, is a part of the education of our children. Equally important is that teachers speak in a healthy and filled way before the children.
Speech is the teacher’s primary tool, and the speech that the children hear has a profound effect on them. Creative Speech is an integral part of the curriculum of the Waldorf Schools worldwide.
Speech artists can advise teachers on texts which are appropriate for the different ages and how to learn to discover how the texts ask to be spoken.
Therapy
Creative Speech (Speech Formation) raises speech to consciousness.
Anthroposophical Therapeutic Speech is an artistic therapy that works not only in relation to the physiology of speech and breathing, but also to the entire human body.
In conjunction with a doctor’s diagnosis and treatment, it may be helpful for disorders such as bronchial asthma, hyperventilation, heart arrhythmia, chronic fatigue, digestive problems and colitis, migraine, rheumatoid diseases, thyroid disorders, iron deficiency, developmental delays, eating disorders, depression and other psychological conditions, shyness, and as a complementary therapy for cancer and AIDS. It is especially helpful in balancing the upper pole (head, nerve-sense system) and the lower pole (metabolic, limb system).
Anthroposophic Therapeutic Speech works with the breath, the sounds, the rhythms and content of language through specific speech exercises and texts.
Core Faculty
Barbara Renold
Barbara trained in Speech and Drama at the Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland (1978-81) and the Harkness Studio in Sydney, Australia (1982-83). As speech and drama teacher at Sunbridge College (1983-2007), she directed student productions of the Oberufer Christmas Plays and several Shakespeare plays, as well as giving speech lessons. Barbara has directed two complete cycles of Rudolf Steiner’s four mystery dramas (1987-1998 and 2006-2014), culminating in the historic Threefold Mystery Drama Festival of August 2014, where all four plays were presented by one cast, in one conference, for the first time in the English-speaking world. Barbara holds a BA in math from Douglas College and two MAs in elementary education, one of which is in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). She also holds Creative Speech diplomas from the Goetheanum and the Harkness Studio. A co-founder of the Steiner School of Speech Arts, Barbara also teaches creative speech at Eurythmy Spring Valley's School of Eurythmy and directs community theater productions in the Threefold community, where she has lived since 1986.
Jennifer Kleinbach
Jennifer received her Speech Formation diploma from the Speech School of North America and her Eurythmy diploma from the School of Eurythmy in Spring Valley, NY. She has toured with Eurythmy Spring Valley’s stage ensemble as a eurythmist (2000-5) and speaker, and performed under Barbara Renold’s direction in Threefold community productions of Rudolf Steiner’s four mystery dramas (2007, 2012-14). She teaches speech in the Threefold community for the School of Eurythmy, Sunbridge Institute, and the Fiber Craft Studio. A co-founder of the Steiner School of Speech Arts, Jennifer directs community speech ensembles for local festival performances, and performs solo and as the speaker for Eurythmy Spring Valley’s student and professional ensembles. Jennifer holds certificates in Foundation Year and Goethean Studies from Rudolf Steiner College, a BA in classical languages from Haverford College, and an MA in medieval studies from the University of Notre Dame.
Helen Lubin
Helen founded Speech Arts in Waldorf Schools in North America to further speech work as an integral part of Waldorf education. Over the past thirty years, she has paid some 250 "school speech visits" to more than sixty North American Waldorf schools, working with classes, teachers, individual students, administrators, and parents. Helen holds BS degrees in special educational studies and speech pathology and audiology, and an MA in human development. She completed the Camphill Seminar in Curative Education and has ten years’ experience in that field, including as class teacher. She has played the role of Maria in Rudolf Steiner’s four mystery dramas, is a certified TESOL instructor, and also works as a freelance editor/translator.
Carley Horan
Carley Horan is a native of Wisconsin whose interest in theater led to her to New York to study Speech Formation, graduating from the Steiner School of Speech Arts in 2024. Her enjoyment of movement has also led her to the Spacial Dynamics training and to a particular love for the Greek gymnastic events. She teaches at Green Meadow Waldorf School, the School of Eurythmy, and the Steiner School of Speech Arts, and in the fall of 2024 began touring with the Eurythmy Spring Valley Ensemble as their speaker.