Upcoming Events

GROUP: PERSONA(S)

February 8 - April 5, Tuesdays 7:30-9pm EST

a weekly committed group where members will create a persona to assist in deep explorations of self and other

GROUP is a 2-month relational play laboratory aimed at exploring the big questions of self and other – what am I, who are you, how does our togetherness shape us, and how does this influence our daily interactions with others? GROUP will be facilitated by Aaron Finbloom, and co-facilitated by DPI’s four Team Members, who will guide the group through diverse relational exercises and creative togetherings.

Participants will construct a semi-fictional character which they will play for the entire duration of GROUP. This character will be modeled off of Internal Family Systems (IFS) 8 Cs of Self-Energy: Calm, Connection, Compassion, Creativity, Clarity, Curiosity, Confidence and Courage. The hope is that this fictional character will help participants to playfully investigate dark, shadowy or problematic aspects of themselves and others in a manner that allows for greater growth and transformation. In-between our GROUP sessions, participants will have short assignments such as writing letters to one’s inner parts, to other participant’s parts, and also brief support-sessions to help participants fully enter into their character.

APPLY

GROUP invites participants into a deep play container that may be somewhat risky and intense with the hope being that this intensity will be generative and transformative. Given the intensity of this container, we are requiring an application process, and participants will be vetted using a brief 10-minute phone call to make sure that everyone has the capacity and resource to hold this container. No prior experience with GROUP, Deep Play, or IFS is necessary to participate.

Details: GROUP will be held from February 8 - April 5 on Tuesdays, from 7:30-9:00 pm EST. The application deadline is January 31st. Our meetings will be held over Zoom. Income-based sliding scale tuition is $350-550 USD. Tier 1: $550 | Tier 2: $450 | Tier 3: $350 | BIPOC, Tier 3. Please review the various pricing options, and if you don't find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch. We are committed to paying our facilitators fairly while also making this possible for everyone who needs it. The maximum number of participants for GROUP will be 12. Participants must sign up for the entire GROUP series. Please contact [email protected] if you have any further questions. Importantly, while we hope this GROUP will provide therapeutic impacts, this series and its individual sessions should not be a substitute for seeing a therapist, counselor, or other mental health specialist.

What participants from past iterations of GROUP are saying:
"This was an amazing process to be a part of at this point in my life and I am feeling very fortunate and grateful."
"Wildly different and nourishing."
"Very magical. Was able to really transport everyone."

SCHEDULE*

FEB 8

INTRODUCTION

This session will provide an introduction to the GROUP series, and the facilitation styles therein. We will set rules and agreements for our container, and we will begin to create our characters.
FACILITATORS: AARON FINBLOOM / KHUYEN BIO / NETTA SADOVKY / NATALIA STROIKA / SARAH LEDBETTER

FEB 15

PARTS MAPPING

This will be our first session where we will attempt (for the majority of the session) to be in character. We will spend more time feeling out the contours of our characters, and then we will begin to dive into an exploration of our inner selves by mapping some of our parts, and perhaps uncovering some more marginalized or problematized roles.
FACILITATORS: AARON FINBLOOM

FEB 22

UGLY MUSIC

In this session, participants will explore sound as an elemental, messy, even monstrous pathway to a fuller experience of Self relating with Parts. We'll take time to diversify our habitual vocal range with a plenitude of options, then move into a more focused inquiry with the selection of sounds that animate the Self or feel indicative of an important Part. We will ask: who is here, what is this presence protecting or serving, who does it become in a group setting, and what does it do when I'm not listening to it? “Let the wild rumpus start!” (Max, WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, M. Sendak)FACILITATORS: SARAH LEDBETTER (& AARON FINBLOOM)

MARCH 1

PSYCHODRAMA

Psychodrama is an action method in which participants use spontaneous dramatization, role playing, and dramatic self-presentation to engage a situation or encounter. This session will use psychodrama techniques to help participants more deeply engage with a handful of inner parts. After a brief warmup, and explication of the practice, participants will designate places in their room to represent their inner parts, and then move around the room engaging in an active dialogue with their parts. The hope is that hidden inner patterns will emerge, and that a participant's character will be able to use their inner resource to help parts better get along.
FACILITATORS: AARON FINBLOOM

MARCH 8

NEW RULES

What game are you playing? During this session inspired by Theater of the Oppressed and grounded in the practice of Ludic Liberation, participants will conduct an Existential Game Analysis to dissect the games their GROUP characters like to play - consciously and subconsciously - and experiment with ways to stretch and alter their existential rules. Through iterative gameplay cycles (simulations), players will be able to reflect on the resulting emotional and relational outcomes.
FACILITATORS: NATALIA STROIKA (& AARON FINBLOOM)

MARCH 15

AUTHORITY IN
THE BODY

Netta will facilitate the group in a form of social meditation in which we collaboratively bear witness to power dynamics within and among group members. Through the influence of Internal Family Systems Therapy and Tavistock Group Relations, we will use emotional awareness and attentiveness to body sensation to make sense of the group's relationship to authority of various kinds.
FACILITATORS: NETTA SADOVSKY (& AARON FINBLOOM)

MARCH 22

PARTS PLAY

Given our greater familiarity with our parts at this point in the series, we will now create mini-plays or scenes for our parts. Using tools drawn from playback theatre we will create structured encounters for our parts, and see how they interact within the playful containers that we create.
FACILITATORS: AARON FINBLOOM

MARCH 29

FEEDING THE DEMONS

This session will explore the lovely annoying creature inside of you that holds you back, traditionally called the shadow. In this session we will be using toys (words and body sensation) to draw out and feed these little demons. It will be gentle, it will be pleasurable, and it will open you up to new possibilities. Think inner massage.
FACILITATORS: KHUYEN BUI (& AARON FINBLOOM)

APRIL 5

CLOSURE

This session will provide closure to the GROUP series. We will try to give gratitude to all of our parts, and our persona that we have been playing for the duration of the series, and create agreements to continue to engage in this material outside of the GROUP container. We will also hold space for emotions that emerge around endings and departures, as we say goodbye to each other and end our time together in this container.
FACILITATORS: AARON FINBLOOM

*While we recognize the importance of planned trajectories and schedules, we also believe it is important to remain sensitive to the emergent group process. As such, we will read the group to meet it where it is and potentially alter and augment our offerings to meet the group’s needs.

BIOS

Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the founder & director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he also facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. Finbloom has presented works internationally at venues which include: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 (New York), Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei (Berlin), UNAM (Mexico City), and MainLine Theatre (Montreal). He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York and The University of Portland. finblooming.com

Khuyen Bui is an author, speaker and well sought after guide who specifically works with purpose-driven leaders, community builders and coaches to level up their impact. Graduated cum laude from Tufts University studying Computer Science and Philosophy, he thrives in bringing analytical rigor into his fascination with human messiness. Khuyen enjoys writing & storytelling and has won several awards, notably Peter Drucker Challenge and The Moth Boston. His first book, Not Being - The Art of Self-Transformation, is about how our sense of self shifts from a separate entity into a wider sense of togetherness. He is currently based in Vietnam, pioneering this new yet ancient way of living, working and playing together, incorporating many modalities such as writing, coaching, contact improvisation, poetry, meditation and circling. His eyes lit up upon beautiful questions. Find him at khuyenbui.com

Natalia Stroika (she/her +/-) is an Existential Game Maker/Destroyer. She is the creator of Ludic Liberation, a practice of collective play aimed at revealing & releasing our internalized limitations. You can read more about the Ludic Liberation philosophy at www.ludicliberation.com, join a monthly Ludic Liberation Lab to help R&D new liberatory game mechanics, read The Lab Report of past experimental results and existential game theory, or work with Natalia directly on tuning up or redesigning your Personal Existential Game (PEG). Natalia has a Doctorate in Learning Sciences and training in Transformational Social Therapy and the Warm Data Lab process. Natalia lives in so-called South Philadelphia and as mummer with the Vaudevillains New Years Brigade, she has been a hoagie, a tree, a rainbow, a butterfly, a feral cat mother, a fish, a planet, and a pterodactyl.

Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer.

Sarah Ledbetter is a dancing writer and a body-based psychotherapist whose work has been presented or published nationally and internationally at such cool spots and publications as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Film, the Berlin Black Film Festival, Earthdance E|Merge Interdisciplinary Arts Residency, the Body Mind Centering Conference, floromancy, Fourth River, Right Hand Pointing, and R and R Literary Magazine. Her main interest is how the fiesta of being in a body flows reciprocally into creative, social, site-specific, and therapeutic process. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and Skull Valley, Arizona where her body-based creative and psychotherapeutic practice is anchored and winged.

PAST EVENTS

SYMBIOSIS

Saturday, Dec 11th, 10am-3pm PST

a live action role playing (LARP) that explores the quest for healthy coping and communication skills in relationships

Image Credit: Hasan Almasi on Unsplash

FACILITATORS

Sarah Lynne Bowman
Sarah Lynne Bowman (Ph.D.) is a professor, scholar, game designer, and event organizer. She has taught various college classes in Game Design, Humanities, English, and Communication. In 2010, she published The Functions of Role-playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems, and Explore Identity through McFarland Press.

Currently, she works as a Senior Lecturer for the Department of Game Design at Uppsala University Campus Gotland where she helped found the Transformative Play Initiative in 2021. She also serves as the Program Coordinator for the Peace & Conflict Studies program in the Interdisciplinary Studies department at Austin Community College.

Bowman contributes regularly to the popular and academic discourse around role-playing game studies. helped organize the Living Games Conference (2014, 2016, 2018) and co-coordinated the Role-playing and Simulation in Education Conference (2016, 2018). She served as an editor for The Wyrd Con Companion Book from 2012-2015, is a coordinating editor for the International Journal of Role-playing, and is a managing editor for the magazine Nordiclarp.org. Her current research and game design interests include safety, calibration, and consent; larp as a therapeutic and educational tool; spirituality through play; role-playing and intimacy; and other matters related to transformative play.

Dani Higgins

Dani Higgins (LPC, NCC) is a psychotherapist who has also staffed multiple game events. They have a private practice, Liminal Counseling, in Denver, Colorado. They specialize in working with adult LGBTQ+ clients who are dealing with trauma, gender dysphoria, ADHD, and/or codependency. Dani comes from an existentialist therapeutic orientation, and implements into their therapy a variety of modalities such as Gestalt, Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and Motivational Interviewing (MI). They are currently in the certification process for both clinical supervision and equine assisted mental health.

Dani has given trainings and presentations on trauma, spiritual emergency and initiatory experiences, the intersection of psychology and spirituality, the psychospiritual value and potential in role-playing games, non-binary gender identity in the workplace, and counseling non-monogamous clients. Dani is especially interested in the psychotherapeutic potential of role-playing games in a group setting.

Symbiosis explores the quest to learn healthier coping and communication skills in relationships. In this live action role-playing (larp) experience, we will use character embodiment within a fictional setting to evoke the energetic dynamics underpinning relationship conflicts. The character interactions in Symbiosis draw inspiration from principles in counseling, including attachment theory, Gestalt therapy, and transactional analysis. This enactment work will help us use metaphoric language to practice relationship skills in an embodied, somatic way. We will then process our experiences together, sharing our reflections on our own behavioral tendencies in relationships.

The characters in Symbiosis are an alien species on the planet Saturn who subsist on stardust. In this larp, a group of Saturnite adolescents are sequestered at a retreat. Their work is guided by the Gardener, a fully adult Symbiote, who facilitates their development through a series of structured exercises. In adolescence, Saturnites are Parasitic -- meaning that in order to acquire stardust, they can only extract it from their loved ones through dysfunctional strategies. As they mature, this species learns Symbiotic traits, which allow them to create new stardust together through mutual exchange and interdependency. Symbiosis enacts the journey of struggle and transformation that can occur within the alchemical container of relationships, with the ultimate goal of practicing how to attune more harmoniously with others.

Details about the experience:

This five (5) hour experience features workshopping, safety briefing, play, de-roling, and debriefing.
Participants will need to bring stickers shaped like stars, non-toxic markers, or body paint they are comfortable using to draw on their face or arms
A thirty (30) minute break will be provided in between phases of the larp.
Participants should prepare in advance any quick meals, beverages, or snacks you might need during the session.
Facilitators will send out a short pre-game survey before the larp for participants to complete.
The facilitators will also hold an optional one and a half (1.5) hour Integration session a week after the larp for further processing and reflection.

Come learn and grow with us in the gardens of Saturn.

When:

Full Experience: Saturday, Dec 11th, 10am-3pm PST
Integration Session (optional): Saturday, Dec 18, 12pm-1:30pm PST

Where: Online on Zoom
Price (sliding scale): $100, $75, or $50 (see diagram)
Maximum Players: 13

TICKETS

Image Credit: Yun Xu on Unsplash

QUESTION FESTIVAL
Saturday, November 13th, 10am-10pm EST

QUESTION FESTIVAL (Saturday Nov 13th) is a virtual festival featuring immersive, interactive, embodied workshops about life's biggest questions. Each workshop is led by a different facilitator who will use deep play to guide participants through one vital question. These workshops will be interspersed with breaks for collaborative drawing, collaborative music-making, snacking, resting, and conversation.

Our questions will include: Are we there yet? What is happiness? Is your love bad medicine? What choices do we have in this play? What if our shadows could dance? Who are my other selves? What is attention? What’s happening right now? What is a question?

Workshop activities are inspired by: authentic relating, authentic movement, contact improv, clowning, theatre of the oppressed, deep listening, parts work, tavistock group relations, surrealist word games, interactive storytelling, childhood games (ex- truth or dare), dance, circus, psychodrama, internal family systems therapy, and clowning.

Tickets: 1 workshop $20 / 3 workshops $60 / 6 workshops $80 / Full day pass $110
Discounted tickets are always available for those in financial need (please contact [email protected])

TICKETS

10am EST

What is a question?

As an introduction to the Question Festival let's question questions! How do questions feel? How do they behave? How do we behave with them? Questions are a means of using words to demarcate the boundaries of things and thereby clarify the unknown. To form a question is not to eradicate the unknown, but rather to begin to see it more clearly. This workshop will use surrealist word games, guided meditation, and collaboratively composed dream-imagery to explore the inner landscape of questioning.

Facilitator: Aaron Finbloom
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through relational games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he facilitates experimental sessions inspired by these practices. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York. www.finblooming.com

11am EST

What is attention?

“Something like collage is at the heart of the unstable and highly personal process of perception.” - Jenny Odell The nature of our experiences is mediated by the quality of our attention to the world. Therefore, the specific realities that we find ourselves within are correlated to how we perceive internal and external stimuli. In this session we will investigate the dramaturgy of our attentional patterns and play with new modes of attending to ourselves, each other, and our environments. We will be guided towards repatterning reception to become more attuned to a wider set of possibilities in the here and now. The exercises we enter will embody a pedagogy of gentle disorientation and are drawn from disciplines such as Deep Listening, statework, and somatics. All are welcome!

Facilitator: Julia Gladstone
Julia Gladstone is an artist working in the expanded field of choreography to figure socialities. Forms take shape through performance, sculpture, video, and experimental pedagogy. Her work has been presented in France, Belgium, Israel, and across the U.S. She is a recipient of the DAAD Fellowship in Performing Arts, organizes Clouds Gathering performance festival, and is a certified facilitator of Deep Listening. She is currently in the midst of a MFA at University of Pennsylvania and MSW at Simmons University.

12pm EST

Who are my other selves?

This workshop is about accessing the interior world of our alter-ego. We will use guided associative meditation to contact an alternate version of ourselves. This unique other/self is a reflection of our known daily self -- intimately related but possibly different in behavior and appearance. In our imaginations, we will embody this reflected alter ego and experience a memory from their perspective. What will we learn about daily selves, through this familiar yet warped vantage point? What memories are living within us that belong to a different dimension of understanding? In this practice, the provided meditation functions as a scaffold. The narrative material is generated in the shallows of the participant’s subconscious. Therefore, each experience will be personal and rich in meaning, similar to a dream. At the end of our session, we will record our alter-ego memories with as much detail as possible.

Facilitator: Chloë Engel
Chloë Engel (she/they) is a performer, improviser, early-childhood Waldorf teacher, and nanny currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Chloë makes performance about Madness, hazy trauma, nostalgia, and queer reverie as rebellion. Chloë’s performance work has been shown at Open Performance, No Theme Festival (Poughkeepsie, NY), Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA), Middlebury College, Bennington College, and AUNTS Festival (Brooklyn, NY). She teaches a weekly online associative meditation class called: suggested methods to feel your feelings. chloeengel.org

1pm EST
BREAK & Collective Drawing

2pm EST

What choices do we have in this play?

Shakespeare called the world a stage, assuming there is a creative source called God, what choices do we, players, have in this play? Join us to explore this play full question using improvised theater, collaboration, connection and interactive exploration. Participants will brainstorm characters and will be assigned characters to experiment with the possibilities of free will and assigned roles. The facilitator will guide the storytelling process that will allow for processing and risk taking.

Facilitator: Kiona Medina
Born in Colombia, Kiona Medina is a San Francisco Bay Area based interdisciplinary artist, heartful facilitator and consultant with a MA in expressive arts therapy. Her practice and work is centered around the intersections of Catholic mysticism, creativity and embodiment in all ages. She specializes in a metaphorical pedagogy that involves participants of all abilities with an emphasis on trauma healing, grief, storytelling, transitions and reconstruction. Offerings range from body awareness to symbolizing found objects around us to using dramatic play, animation techniques and dynamic engagement with nature. She has presented her work internationally and throughout the SF bay area.

3pm EST

Is your love bad medicine?

Have you ever wondered if your love hurts people? Or thought maybe you were bad at loving, or not cut out for love? In this workshop, we'll play a game that's like a hybrid of 'truth or dare' and 'let's pretend.' We'll brainstorm what you want to get out of love, and what you fear from love, and uncover some of our unconscious working theories about love and suffering. Then we'll create dares and pretend situations in which we test out these theories. You might buy lunch for a stranger, or declare your unconditional love to the person next to you, or vow never to speak to a certain workshop participant ever again... all with the goal of breaking our expectations and habits around love.

Facilitator: Indigo Esmonde
Indigo Esmonde is an artist living in Montreal. You can find their work at daydreamsandassociates.com and realitycalibration.com. Indigo has been described as 'brilliant and terrifying,' 'naive,' 'an acquired taste,' 'a bit overbearing,' 'the best at throwing online parties' and 'lives on their own planet.'

4pm EST

Are we there yet?

We’re getting closer. … To what? And who are we? Where are we going? When will we arrive? Also, why are we doing this? Together we’ll discover that Are we there yet? isn’t limited to a whining child in the backseat. Instead, Are we there yet? can serve as a valuable resource to support our examination of readiness, willingness, and ableness for myriad life milestones as individuals, in relationship, and as a collective. Drawing upon intuition and embodied wisdom, we will personalize, identify, and explore our guiding question. Through work as a group and in dyads, this session will empower us with a grounded tool of inquiry inspired by Carl Sagan’s observation: “For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”

Facilitator: Dara Bram
Dara Bram is an interdisciplinary writer, curator, facilitator interested in peaceful encounters with the unknown. She studies Deep Listening, NVC, and various somatic movement forms. Her research on post-conflict healing rooted her in Kraków, Poland for nearly a decade and led her to related projects in Southeast Asia. Dara currently teaches Altered States: Experimental Embodied Explorations at The Beaubourg School in New Orleans and is a PhD student in cultural anthropology at Tulane University. She is learning to garden, dream, and live without a refrigerator. darabramson.com.

5pm EST
BREAK & Collective Music Making

6pm EST

What if our shadows could dance?

To get in contact with our shadows and fears in a playful way, to materialize our monsters and invite them to play. Through one on one connection, this workshop will exercise an empathic feel towards parts of us that are not always easy to face. Those that are connected to past experiences and traumas and restrain our movement to the same forms. This workshop is about generating movement for our statues or frozen postures, and about giving shape and color for sides of us that are hidden, and acting unconsciously. Drawing, fictionalizing and dancing will be our paths to lighter and ludic ways of looking at our monsters and creating new movements and strategies to deal with them.

Facilitator: Anna Costa e Silva
Anna Costa e Silva is an artist, director and professor from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Owner of an MFA in Visual Arts from the SVA, NYC, she works in the intersections between visual arts, performance, social practice and healing. She has won awards such as Terremoto Ubisoft Grant, American Austrian Foundation Prize and FOCO ArtRio. Has shown her work at institutions such as BienalSur (Buenos Aires), Art In Odd Places (NY), Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius) and Centro Cultural São Paulo (SP). Anna has been trained in Transcendental Meditation, Mindfulness, Aura Reading and Reiki and teaches ArtLife Practices at Parque Lage Visual Arts School, Rio de Janeiro.

7pm EST

What is happiness?

For the past six months I’ve been in a creative process with Almanac, a dance, circus and theater group based in Philadelphia. The name of the piece we've been creating is Happy Hour, and our task was to be happy for one hour, which led to the question, “What is happiness?” This workshop will be an experiential (and interactive) tour of that creative process adapted for a virtual gathering. It will include a guided movement warm up, followed by questions and scores that draw from authentic movement, circling, deep listening and other somatic practices. For this workshop please be in space big enough and clear enough to swing your arms and lay down on the ground. Ideally you will also have an area of wall space to lean on. Please wear comfortable clothing and have paper and pen handy.

Facilitator: Gabrielle Revlock
Gabrielle Revlock is a choreographer, performer, improviser, somatics educator and creator of Restorative Contact, a mindful touch-based movement practice. Described by the press as inventive, mesmerizing, and a gifted comedian, she has toured the USA, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Hungary, India, Russia and was awarded a 2020 Bessie Award for Outstanding Breakout Choreographer and named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ by the performance journal Tanz in 2018. As a teacher she has conducted workshops at American Dance Festival, The Barnes Foundation, The Fabric Workshop & Museum, various schools and universities and is on faculty at Movement Research in NYC. More at GabrielleRevlock.com

8-10pm EST

What's happening now?

On the one hand, when we say 'be present,' it can seem obvious what that means. But sitting with the question, we find there are many layers: perhaps a fluttering in the belly, a role you play, a nagging doubt, the pending sense of climate change, the change of seasons. These layers somehow coexist and interact, sometimes in conflict with one another, and with all that noise, we sometimes shut out parts of what's present. Netta and Sarah offer you a two hour gentle dive into a more curious wakefulness, through a roadtrip among a few of the layers that make up a more intricate 'now.' We'll conclude with an invitation to playfully notice what's really present within and between us in our group-as-a-whole. Come play with us!

Facilitators: Netta Sadovsky & Sarah Ledbetter
Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer.

Sarah Ledbetter is a dancing writer and a body-based psychotherapist whose work has been presented or published nationally and internationally at such cool spots and publications as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Film, the Berlin Black Film Festival, Earthdance E|Merge Interdisciplinary Arts Residency, the Body Mind Centering Conference, floromancy, Fourth River, Right Hand Pointing, and R and R Literary Magazine. Her main interest is how the fiesta of being in a body flows reciprocally into creative, social, site-specific, and therapeutic process. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and Skull Valley, Arizona where her body-based creative and psychotherapeutic practice is anchored and winged.

Fall 2021 Semester
Workshops for playfully diving deep into life's biggest questions

The Deep Play Institute launches our first full semester of workshops. Each is facilitated by one of our brilliantly talented team members. Most of our workshops are online, with one in-person workshop to be held in Philadelphia, PA. Classes begin in early October, and last from anywhere between 4-10 weeks. Most classes are held on weekday evenings, or weekend afternoons and are suited for North/Central/South American time zones, and some also for European time zones. Our workshops are priced to make our work sustainable for our facilitators and organization, however we are also deeply committed to making our programs accessible to participants from diverse economic backgrounds. We believe that this work should be available for all who need it. If you are in need, please contact us ([email protected]) to discuss a sliding-scale tuition fee that would be suitable for you.

OPEN HOUSE
Sunday Sept 26th, 7:30-9:30pm EST
an evening of free samplings/tasters of our Fall workshops

PLAYING WITH WHAT
WE LOVE MOST

Khuyen Bui
Sundays 10am-12pm EST / Virtual
Cycle 1: Oct 3 - 24 / Cycle 2: Nov 7 - Dec 5
$250 Early Bird (by Sept 27)
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)
curious to know more...

GAMES WE PLAY
WITH OURSELVES

Natalia Stroika
Wednesdays 7-8:30pm EST
Oct 6 - Nov 10 (6 sessions)
Virtual
$350 Early Bird (by Sept 27)
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)

LOVE GAMES

Netta Sadovsky
Tuesdays 7-8:30pm EST
Oct 5 - Dec 14 (10 sessions)
Philadelphia, PA
$500 Early Bird (by Sept 27) / deadline to apply Sept 30
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)

CONTACT
(more or less)

Sarah Ledbetter
Saturdays 3-4:30pm EST
Oct 16 - Nov 20 (6 sessions)
Virtual
$350 Early Bird (by Sept 27)
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)

PLAYING WITH WHAT WE LOVE MOST

INSTRUCTOR

Khuyen Bui is an author, speaker and well sought after guide who specifically works with purpose-driven leaders, community builders and coaches to level up their impact. Graduated cum laude from Tufts University studying Computer Science and Philosophy, he thrives in bringing analytical rigor into his fascination with human messiness. Khuyen enjoys writing & storytelling and has won several awards, notably Peter Drucker Challenge and The Moth Boston. His first book, Not Being - The Art of Self-Transformation, is about how our sense of self shifts from a separate entity into a wider sense of togetherness. He is currently based in Vietnam, pioneering this new yet ancient way of living, working and playing together, incorporating many modalities such as writing, coaching, contact improvisation, poetry, meditation and circling. His eyes lit up upon beautiful questions. Find him at khuyenbui.com

What do you love the most? Have you given yourself to it, and if not, why? What dampens that fire? What is possible when it is sparked more?
In this brand new month-long series, we will be playing with what we love the most. We will court them, play with them and likely be enthralled by what we found.

This series will be most suitable for those who are contemplating a change, such as browsing around for new places to live or work with. It is also for those who have been going through a transition, exploring a different way of life that goes beyond the usual mode of productivity and achievements.
What we love the most is often elusive, and its very elusive nature is what makes the play so tantalizing. Sure you’ve heard of the infamous line "do what you love", but what if it really is "flirt with what you might love?"

Finding your passion isn't a serious business. It really is a risky play.
Somehow in the course of life, we lose touch with that vitality, what the Greek once calls "eros". If you ever felt meh and want a reset button, this series is for you. It will rekindle that fire, reboot your adventurous side that WE ALL KNOW YOU HAVE BUT ALAS WHERE IS IT NOW, make you laugh and facepalm. You will leave the series with a new affair for that elusive thing called "what you love". Who knows, you might get into a romance with it :-)

HOW? The special aphrodisiac for this includes:

Courtly Questions: Question is the way to organize the unknown. If what we love remains elusive, we will need suggestive questions that will coach and coax out your core.

Embodiment: physical engagement to lure yourself out of mehness, making sure you don’t just love the idea but also know intimately the sensations of that which you love.

Collective Presence: through the practice of circling, we will closely accompany each other to spark the aliveness already here, the eros of life.

In between sessions, we will have a few sign spotting games to continue brewing your insights on that which you love and a dedicated group conversational channel to share them.

Curious to know more? - check out this Youtube Link

DATES: Cycle 1: Oct 3, 10, 17, 24. Cycle 2: Nov 7, 14, 21, Dec 5 (4 sessions)
TIME: Sundays 10am-12pm EST
LOCATION: Zoom
MAX CAPACITY: 12 Participants
TUITION: $250 Early Bird Registration before Sept 27
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)

CYCLE 1
REGISTER

CYCLE 2
REGISTER

LOVE GAMES

INSTRUCTOR

Netta Sadovsky, MFA, LSW (she or they) is an artist and therapist living in Philadelphia, PA. She provides group and individual counseling specializing in alternative sexualities and relationship structures at West Philly Therapy Center, and is a teaching artist at Center for Creative Works. Netta is a student of Internal Family Systems, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Mindful Facilitation, Theater of the Oppressed, and Psychodrama, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer.

Love Games is a 10 week workshop exploring romantic love. We will use a variety of therapeutic, somatic, meditation, and pedagogical practices to structure our time together. We will learn from our group members’ experiences in the past and present, and support one another's imaginings into the future. We will sometimes explore our experiences of love in the here-and-now of the group, which will be aided by an agreement that no romantic relationships may be started during the 10 week workshop. These here-and-now explorations will allow us to also notice and investigate love’s relationship to other feelings that often show up alongside it, including hate, like, shame, euphoria, and arousal. We will set a norm of acceptance towards the many forms love can take, with a special attention to sending acceptance towards the ways that differences in gender, sexuality, race, age, ability, neurodiversity, and other identities can inflect our preferences and norms. We will work together to maintain and grow the safety of the space so that our group’s diversity can be seen and worked with.

I will draw from a series of practices to help us deepen our questions, including Psychodrama, Process Work, Internal Family Systems therapy, Contact Improvisation, Tavistock Group Relations, and Theater of the Oppressed. These methods will aid us to move beyond analytical conversation into more embodied and experiential ways of learning and knowing. Our time together will also be supported by readings including On Love by Eve Sedgewick, Polysecure by Jessica Fern, and All About Love by Bell Hooks. We will use these texts to help us wonder about how our understandings of love have political roots and implications.

As a group we will collaborate to find our questions about love. Some that I anticipate bringing into the space with me include: what is love? How has the concept been taught to me? What about love have I given up on? How does my understanding of love relate to my ethnic/cultural backgrounds? How does my understanding of love reflect a political project beyond me? What happens to love when it intersects with judgments and disliking? What happens with love when boredom is present? What has it been like to love while also hating?

DATES: Oct 5, 12, 19, 26, Nov 2, 9. 16, 30, Dec 7, 14 (10 sessions)
TIME: Tuesdays 7:30-9:30pm EST
LOCATION: MAAS Building, 1325 N Randolph St. Philadelphia
TUITION: $500 Early Bird Registration before Sept 27
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)
MAX CAPACITY: 12 Participants
COVID POLICY: All participants will be required to show proof of covid vaccination, and will be required to wear masks at all times during the workshop.
Deadline to apply is September 30th

CONTACT (MORE OR LESS)

INSTRUCTOR

Sarah Ledbetter is a dancing writer and a body-based psychotherapist whose work has been presented or published nationally and internationally at such cool spots and publications as the Sans Souci Festival of Dance Film, the Berlin Black Film Festival, Earthdance E|Merge Interdisciplinary Arts Residency, the Body Mind Centering Conference, floromancy, Fourth River, Right Hand Pointing, and R and R Literary Magazine. Her main interest is how the fiesta of being in a body flows reciprocally into creative, social, site-specific, and therapeutic process. She is currently based in Nashville, Tennessee and Skull Valley, Arizona where her body-based creative and psychotherapeutic practice is anchored and winged.

Imagine for a second that you’re in a mosh pit or on a crowded subway – does this exhilarate you? Gross you out? Do you miss it or do you secretly dread the “return to normal” (whatever that is, whenever that may be?) Or perhaps it’s all of that – a swirl of desire and anxiety with contact is perhaps a defining feature of the mammalian class. So much focus on the distance between our bodies has left what happens WITHIN the “six foot life preserver” neglected.

CONTACT (more or less) is an experiment and an exploration of contact--wanting more, wanting less, and playing with what’s actually already here in our own breathable bubbles. This playful, immersive, and also restful workshop will accompany participants through embodied awareness practices, contact improvisation scores for beginners, and experiments with social space as it intersects with the imagination, on a mercurial quest to reclaim our very own kind of contact with the life that is already here.

The 6 weeks of discovery are organized a bit like nesting bowls. We’ll start with the most granular of questions and move out to more subtle and spacious ones, each layer containing and holding the prior ones and building towards a big state of wonder about what it means to share ourselves with one another – our weight, our momentum, and our moment – across the vastness that now connects us.

Week One: How round is the earth--in your experience?
Week Two: Rebound/bouncy boundaries: where do you end and I begin?
Week Three: Introversion Inversion: What’s wrong with being shy??
Week Four: Inner volumes and Outer Space/Alien intelligence?
Week Five: Languid Language in the Chaise Lounge
Week Six: Adult Swim: Advancing a constant operative of discovery

DATES: October 16, 23, 30, Nov 6 & 13 (6 Sessions)
TIME: Saturdays 3-4:30pm EST
LOCATION: Zoom
MAX CAPACITY: 20 Participants
TUITION: $350 Early Bird Registration before Sept 27
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)

Image Credit: Jeri B. Ledbetter, "BLANCHE, mixed media, 2021".

GAMES WE PLAY WITH OURSELVES

INSTRUCTOR

Natalia Stroika (she/her +/-) is an Existential Game Maker/Destroyer. She is the creator of Ludic Liberation, a practice of collective play aimed at revealing & releasing our internalized limitations. You can read more about the Ludic Liberation philosophy at www.ludicliberation.com, join a monthly Ludic Liberation Lab to help R&D new liberatory game mechanics, read The Lab Report of past experimental results and existential game theory, or work with Natalia directly on tuning up or redesigning your Personal Existential Game (PEG). Natalia has a Doctorate in Learning Sciences (the science and art of how people learn!) and training in Transformational Social Therapy and the Warm Data Lab process. Natalia lives in so-called South Philadelphia and as mummer with the Vaudevillains New Years Brigade, she has been a hoagie, a tree, a rainbow, a butterfly, a feral cat mother, a fish, a planet, and a pterodactyl.

As children, we talked to imaginary friends, built forts and arranged dollhouses, daydreamed about fantasy worlds, and pretended to be magical beings. But when we got “all grown up,” these varied forms of solo play have all but dissolved. As adults, we still play sometimes, but our play is mostly designated to certain contexts: the phone screen, the video game console, the weekly RPG night, sometimes, perhaps, the bedroom.

Whatever happened to those childhood games of ours? In this 6-week workshop series for adults, we’ll consider the possibility that we didn’t just outgrow imaginative solo play; rather, we’ve adultified it – made it complicated, work-like, self-important. In fact, we played our games so well into this next level that we forgot that we were even playing. In the process, we also lost the most important rule of childhood play–the one that says that you can always change the rules.

This series will invite us to reveal our secret adult gameplay dynamics and – if we desire – to re-envision our existential playbooks using the methods of Ludic Liberation. Ludic Liberation is a practice of collective play designed to explore and experiment with conventions, norms, mainstream concepts, and commonly-held beliefs. The goal of Ludic Liberation practice is to playfully make the familiar strange, and in the process to uncover a deeper, more essential truth that has been covered by the illusions and contradictions of living in society.

Some adult-level games we might collectively redesign during “Games We Play With Ourselves” include:

The Game of Infinite Goals on a Perpetually Shifting Horizon (It’s Kinda Like Tetris Except the Shapes Don’t Fit)
The Running Away from DEATH Game! (Also Kinda Like Tetris except the Music is Scarier and the Shapes are Zombies)
Game of Bank Account Peek-a-Boo! Now I see it – now I don’t!
Walking the Weeping Wilderness of Past Mistakes (kind of a bummer of a game)
“What Else Could Go Wrong?” The Game of Advanced Anxiety You Can Play Anywhere (™)
And more!

This series is for existential players who are feeling the call to adventure, are intrigued by the power of the reversal, are willing and ready to question (at least a few of) their beliefs, and are brave enough to experiment with different rules for playing the game of life!

DATES: October 6, 13, 20, 27, Nov 3 & 10 (6 Sessions)
TIME: Wednesdays 7-8:30pm EST
LOCATION: Zoom
MAX CAPACITY: 15 Participants
TUITION: $350 Early Bird Registration before Sept 27
(please contact us for sliding scale tuition options)
PERK: One-on-One Session on your Personal Existential Game

WEEKLY SESSION DESCRIPTIONS

WEEK 1: EXISTENTIAL GAME RETRIEVAL. In this session we will (imaginatively) journey to a magical place where all our childhood play experiences are safely stored. We will explore our personal core play orientations, why we might have forgotten or abandoned certain games, and retrieve forms of play we want to bring back with us into our present lives.

WEEK 2. GAMES OF ASPIRATION. A category of imaginary games we continue to play as adults are games of “aspiration.” We love to imagine our future selves – better and richer and wiser and perfectly fit, living in our (always clean) dream home. In this session, we’ll luxuriate in our future perfection to uncover the hidden rules of this class of games, how they may be sabotaging our fun and happiness, and consider if they might need a tune-up.

WEEK 3: REGRET GAMES. Whether it’s the “spirit of the stairs” from the last conversation with an acquaintance, the lover that got away, or that dumb thing we did when we were nineteen, many of us are haunted by regrets. What if we’d made that other choice? In this session, we will experiment with ways we might STILL live out alternate lives, in the process altering our present reality. YES, have your cake and eat it too! Delicious regret cake!

WEEK 4. PLAYING WITH ATTENTION. Zen teachers cryptically suggest that awakening is attention. Poets say that attention is what the soul is made of. Mystics say that ecstasy is attention at its highest. Meanwhile, what’s left of our attention after email and social media have stolen most of it, keeps… wandering? In this session we will observe and manipulate the powers of our senses to learn to play the most important game of all: the game of being present to what is (and receiving its many presents!!!).

WEEK 5. THE GAME OF BEING YOU with guest facilitator Indigo Esmonde. BE YOURSELF! “All the other jobs are taken.” But how do we know to be ourselves, really? Do we try to repeat who we were yesterday? In this session with Daydream Artist and Failure Consultant Indigo Esmonde, we will act out and play with re-directing the scripts of our personalities.

WEEK 6. PEGGING OURSELVES. In this final session, we’ll put together all what we’ve discovered about our personal existential games and decide if we want to reinvent them using the many ludic and liberatory mechanics explored throughout the series. Players will walk out with a new set of rules for their own life!

LAYERS

a performance piece that playfully investigates the hidden layers of reality contained within the present moment

The Deep Play Institute presents LAYERS – a performance piece that playfully investigates the hidden layers of reality contained within the present moment. The 'here and now' will be endlessly questioned and explored using a series of techniques drawn from: surrealist word games, free association, psychodrama, parts work, circling and experimental vocalizations. While this performance piece will contain a pre-fabricated structure, the content itself will be entirely improvised – as performers feel into the unique qualities of a given moment.

LAYERS will be a hybrid performance with audience members partaking in-person (Portland, OR) and online. Shows are approximately 1 hour in length. In-person ticket price is a suggested donation of $15-25. Online ticket price is a suggested donation of $10-20. All in-person guests will be required to wear masks at all times.

Online Platform: Youtube Live
In-Person Location: Burning Spirits Yoga, Portland, OR.

Shows run the following days/times:
Friday Oct 22nd, 5-6pm PST
Saturday Oct 23, 1-2pm PST
Sunday Oct 24, 4-5pm PST

TICKETS

BIOS

Aaron Finbloom (Director)
Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the foundar & director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he also facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. Finbloom has presented works internationally at venues which include: The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, Gallery 151 (New York), Maschinenhaus Kulturbrauerei (Berlin), UNAM (Mexico City), and MainLine Theatre (Montreal). He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York. finblooming.com

Afton Brooks (performer)
Afton is fascinated by consciousness and embraces life with curiosity, mindfulness, and a love for adventure. She is an aspiring therapist currently juggling a seasonal job at Delta airlines and a contemplative sense of finding purpose in the healing arts. With training in teaching yoga, a vast love for dancing, meditative movement practices, and intimate conversation, she deeply values experiencing and witnessing authentic expression.

Kenny Frechette (performer)
Kenny is a dancer/performer and recent transplant to Portland. They are drawn to work that centers curiosity, community, and queerness. Upcoming projects: ROMP! (Shaun Keylock Company, Nov ‘21)

Mary Rose (performer)
Mary Helen Charlotte Natalia Luba Praskovia Blaise Rose is an improviser, teacher and community weaver. She teaches Action Theater improvisation—a physical theater improv form—through Portland Action Theater, and she and her husband make shows when the spirit moves them through their company, YOCTOtheatre. She’s delighted to be learning new forms, meeting new people, and exploring the human mind in new ways.

Noah Dean (performer)
Noah is delighted to be performing for his first time with The Deep Play Institute! He recently graduated from Clark College and is eager to return his focus to acting.

THE CAULDRON (Fall 2021)
A free, 3-month long, weekly, one-on-one, virtual event for playing with creative facilitation

APPLY

The Deep Play Institute’s (DPI) launches our 2nd iteration of The Cauldron - a free, 3-month long, weekly, one-on-one, virtual event for playing with creative facilitation. The Cauldron is aimed towards folks who have some kind of practice that involves facilitation. Please read below to see if this would be a good fit for you, and if you are interested in participating, please fill out an application by September 1st, 2021.

A cauldron is a large cooking pot used for brewing spells, magic, soups, and other delicious things. It is a container for testing and tasting. The Deep Play Institute’s “The Cauldron” is an opportunity to engage in this kind of living experiment by creating a one-on-one practice between yourself and another. Perhaps you are an artist with a relational, somatic or performative practice; how would your practice look when shifted into a one-on-one container? Perhaps you are a coach, therapist, counselor or facilitator; what ways are you curious to expand or modify your practice that aren’t possible with a paying client in need of a trusted method? The emphasis in both cases is on playing with the relational container that exists between yourself and the other. This togetherness is your canvas, your laboratory, your testing-grounds. The invitation is to use this one-on-one facilitation container to explore some of the big questions of self, other, togetherness, leadership, engagement, creativity, connection, support, and transformation.

The Cauldron will last for approximately 3 months. Everyone will be paired with one other person who they will facilitate for 3 months, and another different person who they will be facilitated by for 3 months. Participants will have 2 options for meeting frequency. Option 1 Involves a 2-hour / week commitment (one hour every week with person A, your facilitator, and one every week with person B, who you are facilitating). Option 2 involves a 1 hr / week (one hour every 2 weeks with person A, your facilitator, and one hour every 2 weeks with person B, who you are facilitating). After each meeting, the participant will provide feedback, and the facilitator will use it along with their own experience to modify the practice for the next meeting. Throughout our months we will also have a couple of opportunities to meet as a larger group to discuss our findings and share our collective curiosities.

Disclaimer: The Cauldron is a free, anti-capitalist, somewhat anarchic container, and therefore the DPI leadership will not be taking a substantial role to maintain this container, to provide safety during the sessions, nor to match people according to their needs, preferences nor time availability. The experience will therefore require a certain amount of grace and co-leadership on all of our parts. It is especially essential that each Cauldron participant is responsible for knowing and expressing their boundaries. For one, while we hope that everyone can stay for the full 3 months, we understand that various factors may prevent this. If your partner needs to leave the container, you will automatically be matched by the other person paired with your dropped partner. If you decide to drop out, we need you to drop out from both the partnerships. This way, if a person needs to leave the container, their partner will automatically be matched with the person's other partner to keep the experiment going.

Participation in the Cauldron requires an application process (see above). This is meant to create a certain degree of investment and shared values amongst the entire Cauldron group of participants, and help to create a safe enough container for us all to work with and count on each other.

Details:

Platform: live-video conferencing (recommended)
Duration: 1-hour sessions (recommended)
Intervals: Two options. Both partners once a week (2 hours per week). One partner once a week (1 hour per week).
Registration: Please fill out an application form here by Sept 1st.
Timing: We will have a kick-off Zoom meeting sometime in September to go over more details, have a chance to ask questions, and get to know each other a bit. The Cauldron container will then begin in October and go until the end of December.
Cost: Free

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #4 THE ROOM
Event: Saturday July 10, 12-3pm EST
Integration: Tuesday July 13, 12-1pm EST

You are in the real world, in a real room. I am in the real world, in a real room. We both close our eyes and enter another space. Together, we illustrate our surroundings. Everything in this room is built through our words. Together, we build something outside ourselves that belongs to both of us. It’s surprisingly intimate to create a world for each other. In this world, limitless creative potential is tethered by accountability. This world is both a dream and an ecosystem. Everything is available but all choices must coexist with those that came before them. Each moment is idiosyncratic, emerging from the relationality between you and the others crafting this imaginary scene.

The Room, designed by artist-improvisors Anna Kroll and Chloë Engel, is a structured exercise in collaborative imagination. The Room begins with a warmup, where we are together in small groups practicing a series of verbal scores – Action, Sensation, Space. Once these verbal scores become more familiar, they are combined to create an improvisational field (a shared language) of creation and existence which is The Room.

The Room asks us: can we share a space, a dance, a body, when we are not physically together? What happens when we attempt this imaginary togetherness? What new sense of encounter is afforded in this playful imaginary? What can become when the laws of physics are made a bit looser? What new paths of intimacy are carved in this fantastic terrain? Each moment offers an opportunity for reflection – what do we remember, what did we feel, what would have changed? What did we need that we didn’t have? What did we have that we didn’t need?

Anna Kroll’s and Chloë Engel’s work draws from both of their experiences as dance artists and improvisers. They began this collaboration in the Fall of 2020 developing the practice through weekly phone calls that began with the prompt – how can we create a spoken dance?

Workshop Details:
Event: Saturday July 10th 12pm-3pm EST
Integration: Tuesday July 13th 12pm-1pm EST
Tickets: Early Bird Tickets (available until July 1st) are $33. Please contact The Deep Play Institute for sliding scale options if needed. Tickets can be purchased here. Our event will be located on Zoom, and a ticket gives you access to the entirety of the event and integration. No prior experience in play, playgrounds, or existential playgrounds is necessary.

Anna Kroll is a dancer, choreographer and interdisciplinary artist. Anna’s performance work has been shown at No Theme Festival (Poughkeepsie, NY) in Philadelphia Theaters, Rivers and Subway Underpasses at FringeArts’ Scratch Night, Open Call Guerilla Outdoor Performance Festival, Invisible River’s Schuylkill River Arts Day, Cathy Weis' Sundays on Broadway (NYC), and Danspace's Draftwork series (NYC). Her pieces aqueousness (an Instagram feed), and #AllYourMarketing (a live video feed) were in the Digital Fringe portion of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Alluvium and Inlet were commissioned by the Painted Bride Art Center for their expanded archive of Philadelphia, “Re-place-ing Philadelphia”. Her looping video piece your toes, your skin, your heart, your bones was included in the online film festival “Trans(m)it”. She is currently an MFA student at UMBC in Intermedia & Digital Art. She received her BA from Bennington College and is an alum of the Headlong Performance Institute. annakroll.com

Chloë Engel (she/they) is a performer, improviser, teacher, and nanny currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Chloë makes performance about Madness, hazy trauma, nostalgia, and queer reverie as rebellion. Chloë’s performance work has been shown at Open Performance, No Theme Festival (Poughkeepsie, NY), Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA), Middlebury College, Bennington College, and AUNTS Festival (Brooklyn, NY). She teaches a weekly online associative meditation class called: suggested methods to feel your feelings. chloeengel.org

GROUP
Wednesdays, 7-8:30pm EST, May 19 - July 15

GROUP is a 2-month play laboratory aimed at exploring the big questions of self and other – what am I, who are you, and how does our togetherness shape us? GROUP will be led by Aaron Finbloom, who will hold the group (organizing openings/closures and comings/goings) as 8 facilitators from vastly diverse backgrounds will guide the group through relational exercises and creative togethering. Throughout the 2 months there will also be one-on-one sessions to process, integrate and reflect on the content brought up in GROUP. Participants with curiosity, openness and compassion from all backgrounds and experience-levels are encouraged to apply.

Details: GROUP will be held on from May 19 - July 15 on Wednesdays, 7-8:30pm EST. Our meetings will be held over Zoom. The cost is $450 USD, early bird registration until May 7. The maximum number of participants for GROUP will be 12. Participants must sign up for the entire GROUP series. Please contact [email protected] for limited sliding scale tuition options if needed, or if you have any further questions. Registration is non-refundable. This series and its individual sessions are not therapy, and in no way should be a substitute for seeing a therapist, counselor, or other mental health specialist.

May 19 Beginnings w/ Aaron Finbloom

We’ll begin our GROUP with structured conversation guided by authentic relating, circling, question-asking, curiosity and embodied awareness – all meant to help us dive into a collective exploration of the unique togetherness that we are embarking upon.

Bio: Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York. www.finblooming.com

May 26 Fortitude! w/ Rosi Greenberg

We'll kick off the GROUP experience by creating sacred space into which we will invite your innate creativity, your joyful spirit (whether it's with you all the time or feeling a bit hidden), and your reflective self. We start by building blanket forts together to connect, reflect, and playfully delight in our creativity. You will need binder clips, blankets or sheets, pillows, and a journal.

Bio: Rosi Greenberg is an artist and facilitator of connection and creativity. Rosi offers storytelling workshops for leaders at all levels, focusing on seeing self and other in deeper ways. An artist, Rosi scribes meetings as they happen and helps people come into more joyful, creative contact with one another. Rosi draws on experience with storytelling, group dynamics, leadership, play, and her background in education. Rosi lives in Cambridge MA and is the founder of Drawn to Lead. https://www.drawntolead.org/

June 2 The Creature Comforts of Poetry w/ Steven Licardi

In this GROUP, we will be using the power of poetry to build a more loving relationship with our inner struggles, which will be identified as unique, embodied beings or creatures of our own design. Through a series of visioning and writing exercises, we will each -- collectively and individually -- go on a journey of playful discovery and curiosity together alongside this being/creature. Participants will leave this GROUP with tangible poetic tools they may choose to use to continue this work in their own personal practices (or not!).

Bio: Steven T. Licardi is an Autistic social worker, spoken word poet, and performance activist who uses the power of poetry to create empathic dialogue around, to confront the realities of, and to assist communities in dismantling the stigma surrounding mental health and mental illness. www.thesvenbo.com

June 9 Games for Human Being w/ Janet Howe

This workshop guides participants through a rapid game generation process, collaboratively creating new games. Through creating games we explore how play can be used to unpack challenging and complex topics. Our focus will be on pertinent themes of relationally and how we human together.

Bio: Janet K Howe They/Them is a non-binary creator working at the intersection of theatre and games. Their work focuses on creating positive change and learning through playful theatrical experiences and games. Janet has directed and created immersive and interactive theatre in five countries and is the former Artistic Director of Chicago based (re)discover theatre. Janet has trained with Punchdrunk, Third Rail Projects and worked with interactive companies such as Coney, ZU-UK, and Blast Theory www.janetkhowe.com

June 16 Embodiment Forum w/ Solomon Kruegar

This session offers an opportunity to feel more deeply connected to oneself and others. This is a transformative practice that involves expressing what is alive in the here and now, using the whole-body. It also involves offering mirrors back to the presenters: empathetic reflections, using voice, movement, metaphor, presence.

Bio: Exploring what is alive and true in our shared human experience is where my full heart and commitment live. I have nearly 20 years of experience in organizing and facilitating groups, workshops, and retreats. I'm the Founder and Co-Director of Authentic Relating Go, a virtual platform for authentic connection and interpersonal development. https://www.ar-go.live/

June 23 The Squishy Volume of Now w/ Sarah Ledbetter

The ancient Greeks had two very different words for time: in one, humans seem to enter a flow state of presence and joy. Yet the other--also called 'clock time'-- is where most of us hang out day in and out. In this session we'll play with choice and changing gears between the two using the common sense magic of embodied awareness and household props.

Bio: I'm a dancing writer and therapist who's devoted to the creative process as a social, existential playground. I've been leading and sharing body-based, trauma-informed, playful group practices and individual work since 2016. I use she/her pronouns. www.avastandhumbleabode.com

June 30 Voice Dialogue: Speaking From Your Parts w/ Ilana Simons

This workshop explores Voice Dialogue, a branch of Jungian therapy that focuses on the internal voices or parts inside us. We are made of various parts - for instance: our lover, our eccentric, our pleaser – and accepting each part is central to confidence and peace of mind. The group will include an actual Voice Dialogue session with one volunteer and then group work in which we identify inner voices, dare to express them more fully, and decrease the guilt around our contradictions.

Bio: Ilana Simons is a clinical psychologist who has been in private practice for 11 years, largely working with Voice Dialogue. She has PhDs in both literature and psychology and is author of A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living through Virginia Woolf. She also makes short films that have been featured at Cannes, Hyperallergic, and Poets & Writers. ilanasimonsart.com ilanasimons.com

July 7 Here and Now w/ Sybil Ottenstein

An illuminating experience for those of us who grew up in families (and cultures) with elephants-in-the-room, walking-on-eggshells moments, secrets and unspeakable thoughts, “here and now” work offers the opportunity to hear and share the raw, honest thoughts and feelings with other people in the present moment. Deep rooted relational patterns that cause stress and discontent in the “real world” will undoubtedly manifest in the group dynamic as well. The difference is that here, we collectively invite awareness, discussion, and curiosity into the subterranean workings of our interpersonal world.

Bio: I am a trauma-informed relational and somatic psychotherapist, which is a fancy way to say I support people to heal themselves through connecting with the wisdom of their body and the power of relationship. I integrate talk therapy with somatic practices such as breathwork and movement to allow individuals to heal from past experiences and live a life of greater connection and freedom. https://selfworksgroup.com/nyc/therapy/sybil-ottenstein-ma/

July 14 Ensemble Making to Make an Ensemble w/ Ezekiel Baskin

We will find new ways to play together and be together by devising ensemble performances/rituals in small groups. We'll embrace experimentation and the power of constraints to foster quick thinking and playfulness. At the end of our time together we will make a performance within our group, about our group, using our group togetherness as material.

Bio: Ezekiel Baskin is a theatre director, facilitator, designer, and educator. They are a Governing Member of Real Live Theatre, a Founding Member of Theater Between Addresses, and Resident Lighting Designer for Pauline Productions. They love to facilitate collaborative spaces where people play, work, make, learn, grow, and heal together. https://reallivetheatre.net

July 15 (Thursday) Closure w/ Aaron Finbloom

A session of closure immediately following our last session to wrap up, integrate and reflect upon our collective findings.

Image Credits (from top to Bottom): Untitled, Aaron Finbloom / Untitled, Rosi Greenberg / Untitled, Steven Licardi / Untitled, Janet Howe / Embodiment Forum, Tanya Williams / Untitled, Sarah B. Ledbetter / Straight On, Ilana Simons / Untitled, Samantha Keely Smith / Untitled, Ezekiel Baskin / Untitled, Aaron Finbloom

last day to purchase tickets is Wednesday June 2nd

REGISTRATION

What is Syllacrum?
Syllacrum is an immersive psychological LARP (Live Action Role Play) aimed to playfully explore our inner parts and how they exist in relation to a group

Why is Syllacrum?
To playfully explore the mysterious unknowns of self and other. To use fiction and fantasy to play with inner parts and relational interactions that might otherwise feel unsafe. To learn about the importance of our inner parts and how they might serve us. To identify what our parts need from us to feel welcome in our everyday lives, our groups, and as citizens of the world. To explore how emotional needs play into political and historical trajectories. To explore nuances of how groups function in personal, relational, and political spheres

When is Syllacrum?
Two Sundays (all times in EST):
Sunday, June 6th: 10am-12pm, 1-4pm
Sunday, June 13th: 1-3pm

Where is Syllacrum?
Syllacrum is a virtual event held over Zoom.

How many is Syllacrum?
Our workshop has a max capacity of 20 participants

How much is Syllacrum?
Our event is priced along 3 possible income tiers. For guidance on which tier you are invited to pay at please see our diagram here.
Income Tier 1: $150
Income Tier 2: $100
Income Tier 3: $75
BIPOC tuition $75 (tier 3)

SYLLACRUM

Participants who sign up for Syllacrum will engage in a 3-part journey over 2 sessions:

Prep (30 minutes): Participants will be asked to prepare for the first day by mining a handful of their inner parts. The notion of inner parts is used in many forms of therapy, theater, and mediation, and examples of parts might include: our inner critic, the needy baby, the joyful adventurer, the wrathful queen, the lover of nostalgia, etc). We will use a guided Internal Family Systems meditation to facilitate this exploration. Participants will then select one of their inner parts and begin to fashion a fictional character that grows out of this part.

Character Development (2 hours): For the first 2-hour session we will warm up, introduce the fictional world that we will be soon be entering, and begin to develop our characters. This will involve fleshing out details about who your character is, including: name, background, emotional tendencies, likes and dislikes, etc. We will take small dips into being our character to try out how it feels, in order to further adapt and fashion our characters.

Playing (3 hours): After a 1-hour break we will then enter the main “play space” where we will be in our characters and immersed within the fictional world of our LARP. The main activities in this world will be group activities designed to: foster connection, facilitate encounters with other participants, elicit a wide range of emotions, and support inter/intra-personal curiosity. The activities used will be inspired by practices such as: Theatre of the Oppressed, Psychodrama, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations Conferences, Process Work (Process-oriented Psychology), Liberating Structures, and Nordic Larps. During these 3 hours we will take intermittent breaks from being our characters to collectively and individually reflect on and question the experience in efforts to help us deepen the investigation.

Integration (2 hours): For two hours on the following Sunday, we will meet to integrate some of the findings we have uncovered. During this period we will be fully out of character.

Note: Syllacrum is not therapy, nor should be considered a substitute for therapy. Some of the explorations we will engage in have the potential to go rather deep. We believe that deep play lives on an edge between safe and dangerous. As such, we invite participants to play in this liminal space, and as facilitators we will work to help the group stay on this edge. We see it as our responsibility to design a space that is trauma-informed, holds space for emotional processing, includes self-care, and normalizes opting out at any time. We also ask participants to gauge when their experience has crossed into territory that they deem “too edgy” and take the steps necessary for their own emotional safety. Participants will be encouraged to take care of themselves through disengaging, turning off their cameras, and/or leaving the exercise as needed.

Who are we?

The Deep Play Institute’s (DPI) mission is to explore life’s biggest questions through transformative play. We ask questions like: Who am I? What am I? Who do I become with you? What do I want? What do we want? What creates power? What shifts desire? What causes transformation? What is the purpose of my life? What does it mean to be in our world? What is truth, meaning, beauty, goodness, life, existence, reality? We play with practices that include: psychodrama, circling, performance art, clowning, authentic relating, gestalt therapy, process work, coaching, internal family systems, psychoanalysis, community of philosophical inquiry, social art practices, experimental theatre, surrealism, fluxus, pataphysics.

Aaron Finbloom (he/him) is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he also facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York. www.finblooming.com

Lolo Haha (he/him) is a counselor, equity consultant, conflict mediator, and social justice theatre director based in Portland, Oregon. He works with individuals, couples, organizations, and communities to grow in their relationship toward conflict and paradox and to evolve toward a greater collective freedom. https://lolohaha.us/

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #3 W/HOLES
Friday May 7, 11:00am-2:00pm EST

Existential Playground is an ongoing virtual event dedicated to playfully experimenting with the essential questions of our existence. Each playground creates an immersive container meant to catalyze questions around a given theme. For roughly 2-3 hours, we will live questions, try on questions (like outfits), breath in the space around the questions, and watch as more and more questions percolate. Deep play is the fodder for our questions – the play of our senses, feelings, thoughts, bodies, hearts, brains, relationalities, interiorities, voices, memories, edges, and shadows.

We have been playing so much with our parts that we’ve neglected our wholes! For this existential playground we will explore holes and wholes. How are holes wholes? Where are the holes inside our holes? When do we feel a hole or a whole? How are holes and wholes mixed and intermixed? How does language make holes whole again? Are holes holy? We’re thinking about: shadow integration, holes in crocheted doilies making fractal patterns which reveal the whole, black holes (that which sucks in all things), and even arse holes (in the existential sense).

The event itself (a 180 minute WHOLE) will be composed of four ~40 minutes w/holes, along with intros and conclusions. Each of these w/holes, will be orchestrated by a facilitator who will divide their w/hole into a series of holes. These holes will fragment and divide us from the larger whole, dividing time into delicious holy morsels. In each hole that you (the participant) are placed within, you will find that you are holed up with a group of others with some sort of task in need of accomplishing, some sort of hole that is need of filling. With each new hole you find yourselves in, the questions of ‘how we are holed, holy and wholed?’ will be dug up, played with, explored and pieced together.

A few days following the playground we will also hold a 1-hour conversation reflecting and integrating our experience.

Workshop Details:
Event: Friday May 7th 11am-2pm EST
Integration: Tuesday May 11th 11am-12pm EST
Tickets: Early Bird Tickets (available until April 24th) are $33. Please contact The Deep Play Institute for sliding scale options if needed. Tickets can be purchased here. Our event will be located on Zoom, and a ticket gives you access to the entirety of the event.

MEET OUR W/HOLES & FACILITATORS:

Hole, Holy, Whole / Aaron Finbloom
Close your eyes, now imagine you are in a hole. How deep is it? How wide? What is it made of? How are you feeling being inside of it? How long have you been there? With our eyes closed, and in groups of 3, we will transport ourselves into a wild, fantastic world where our imaginations reign supreme, and where holes, wholes and holiness abound.

Bio: Aaron Finbloom is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative inquiry through games, performance art and structured play. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he facilitates experimental individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York. www.finblooming.com

Getting Unstuck / Khuyen Bui
“Change is the only constant” sounds good in theory, but in practice, we all have stagnated puddle somewhere in our life. For this session, you will get to dig around a part of life that needs some gentle shaking up. We will have exactly 37 minutes for 4 tasks of increasing level of murkiness that will bring you from delight to aghast and then to Aha. Warning: while it’s playful, it can be also be useful.

Bio: Sociable nerd, reasonable geek and part-time philosopher, Khuyen enjoys musing & writing about common yet still difficult human dilemma. Graduated from Tufts University studying Computer Science and Philosophy, he thrives in bringing analytical rigor into his inquiries of human messiness. Besides his own coaching practice, he had designed and facilitated hundreds of hours of workshops for various groups and teams. Drawing from various traditions and disciplines, particularly Contact Improvisation, Circling and the Enneagram, his work seeks to uncover the goodness that is already here. Catch him if you can at khuyenbui.com.

ROWD TRIP / Natalia Stroika
In the game ROWD TRIP each player will complete a personal puzzle through semi-structured encounters with other players. The iterative process will reveal unique clues that can only be generated by serendipitous interactions with specific Others, experienced as random at first but eventually tying together into a meaningful whole.

Bio: Natalia Stroika is an existential game maker/destroyer. She is the creator of Ludic Liberation, a practice of collective play aimed at revealing & releasing our internalized limitations. You can read more about the Ludic Liberation philosophy at www.ludicliberation.com, join a monthly Ludic Liberation Lab to help us research & develop new game concepts and mechanics, or work with Natalia directly on tuning up or redesigning your Personal Existential Game (PEG).

Your (w)hole life! / Rosi Greenberg
Your (w)hole life! We'll reflect on elements of your life, exploring where there are holes and where there are wholes of the larger whole. We'll use expressive art and free association to find insights into our lives, reflecting back the w/hole of one another's being. As part of a collective whole, we'll draw out the wisdom to explore what elements of the collective system we each hold (whole-d?).

Bio: Rosi offers leadership workshops for people at all levels, focusing on seeing self and other in deeper ways. An artist, Rosi scribes meetings as they happen and helps people come into more joyful, creative contact with one another. Rosi has studied storytelling, group dynamics, and leadership, and has a background in education. Rosi lives in Cambridge MA and is the founder of Drawn to Lead. https://www.drawntolead.org/

Developmental Transformations (DvT) Workshop
Thursday April 15, 7-9pm EST

When thinking of practices that exemplify transformative play, DvT is the first and most vivid example that comes to mind. I was first introduced to DvT in Montreal a few years ago, as it was described to me by some of my acquaintances as a "radical play practice". I was pleasantly surprised by the seeming boundless expressivity and spontaneity that were expressed at these workshops. At one moment we were in a doctor's office saving a patient, who was revived, only then to be murdered by another participant! But the patient was then miraculously saved again by another participant who turned out to be a brilliant inventor, who was then awarded for his efforts, but the award ceremony very quickly turned into a dance party, which then turned into a ski slope, which then turned into a casino, which was soon robbed by a pack of elegant thieves, etc etc etc. In DvT it seemed as if "all play was allowed", like the endless imaginary of our childhood was reopened, tapping into that vital wellspring of dark and beautiful imagery.

On the Montreal DvT website they describe the practice as: a playful, embodied method that increases spontaneity and creativity as well as improving one's ability to relate with others. DvT is based on the principle that all life is unstable and instead of trying to create a false impression of stability, we practice going with the flow and embrace the instability of being. DvT can be used for both therapeutic and life practice purposes.

Workshop Details: For this particular DvT workshop we will begin with a brief intro and a short warmup. Then the main part of the workshop will involve a mixture of facilitated one-on-one and group activities, interspersed with time for written and imagistic reflection. The workshop will take place on Thursday April 15th 2021, from 7-9pm EST. Tickets cost $25. Our workshop will cap at 15 participants, so tickets are limited as well. Please contact The Deep Play Institute for sliding scale options if needed. Tickets can be purchased here.

Facilitator Bio: ME Louis is a queer Dramatherapist from Belgium and lives in Montreal since 2007. They have been doing theatre since they were a teenager and has a bachelor in psychology. They came to Montreal to start the dramatherapy master program and finished it in 2010. They also graduated from the Montreal DvT Institute in 2015 and is co-directing the Institute of Montreal. They have since not stop giving a voice to women’s and queer’s in need like in prison, shelters, at The Y des Femmes de Montreal, to new immigrants, and in a women’s centre where they led groups for incest survivors.They also offers group and individual therapy since 2011 and travel often in Europe and North America to offer dramatherapy workshops.

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #2 Characters
Saturday March 6, 3:00-6:00pm EST

In our first Existential Playground we forayed into the bizarre world of our inner parts, sensing our psychological landscapes, and gaining some greater familiarity of the terrain. This upcoming Existential Playground will be a more formidable adventure into this world through the construction of a character devised from a few of our inner parts. The facilitators will help us enter into character for the entirety of our time together, and situate us in a fictional world designed to help us get to know the parts we chose.

Before the event, participants will be asked to do 30 minutes of meditation and writing to develop our characters. This will involve partaking in a brief Internal Family Systems meditation, mapping a handful of your inner parts, (for example: your inner critic, lover, worrier, or joker) devising a character from 1-2 of these parts, and then answering some questions about your character. Some of these questions may include: How old is your character? What are their gender pronouns? What is a hobby or activity they enjoy? What is their occupation? What is something they detest?

For our event the fictional world we will construct and enter into will be the following: You are one member of a group of participants who have been solicited by the United States government to brainstorm a brand new adult education program designed to increase emotional intelligence. This program will be mandatory for all adult citizens and so your participation is vital. Through a series of intimate structured encounters with the other participants you will help construct a world that makes more space for people like you.

Workshop Details: For the first part of our workshop (~30 minutes) we will work on getting into our characters through some opening exercises led by organizers Aaron Finbloom and Netta Sadovsky. Then we will fully enter the fictional world with our character for approximately 1.5 hours led by facilitator Lolo Haha. We will end with a closing reflection and debriefing. Early Bird Tickets (available until February 25th) are $30. Please contact The Deep Play Institute for sliding scale options if needed. Tickets can be purchased here. Our event will be located on Zoom, and a ticket gives you access to the entirety of the event.

Facilitator Bios:

Lolo Haha (he/him) is a counselor, equity consultant, conflict mediator, and social justice theatre director based in Portland, Oregon. He works with individuals, couples, organizations, and communities to grow in their relationship toward conflict and paradox and to evolve toward a greater collective freedom.

Netta Sadovsky (she/her) is a social work masters student at Bryn Mawr College. As a clinical social work intern she provides group and individual counseling to survivors of domestic violence and abuse at Laurel House, and has facilitated groups for adults with co-occuring substance abuse and mental health disorders at Pathways to Recovery. She is a student of Psychodrama, Tavistock Group Relations, Mindful Facilitation, and Internal Family Systems, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices.

Aaron Finbloom (he/him) is a philosopher, artist and pedagogue. He is the co-founder of The School of Making Thinking (SMT) and the Director of The Deep Play Institute (DPI). His practice involves expanding transformative conversation through games, performance and play structures. With training in Circling, Authentic Relating, and Psychodrama, he has led dozens of individual and group sessions inspired by these practices. He holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities & Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal, and is currently teaching Philosophy at the City College of New York.

The Cauldron
Ongoing, 2-3 months, Sign-up by January 30th

A cauldron is a large cooking pot used for brewing spells, magic, soups, and other delicious things. It is a container for testing and tasting. The Deep Play Institute’s “The Cauldron” is an opportunity to engage in this kind of living experiment by creating a one-on-one practice between yourself and another. Perhaps you are an artist with a relational, somatic or performative practice; how would your practice look when shifted into a one-on-one container? Perhaps you are a coach, therapist, counselor; what ways are you curious to expand or modify your practice that aren’t possible with a paying client in need of a trusted method? The emphasis in both cases is on playing with the relational container that exists between yourself and the other. This togetherness is your canvas, your laboratory, your testing-grounds.

The Cauldron will last for approximately 2-3 months, with weekly meetings encouraged. All participants will play the roles of both facilitator and participant. After each meeting, the participant will provide feedback, and the facilitator will use it along with their own experience to modify the practice for the next meeting. Throughout our months we will also have a couple of opportunities to meet as a larger group to discuss our findings and share our collective curiosities.

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #1 Parts
Saturday Nov 21, 3-6:30pm EST

We are all made up of parts (i.e. different roles, selves, or inner voices). A critic, a lover, a despairer, a self-negater, a cheerleader, an aesthete, etc. Many relational practices (Internal Family Systems Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, etc) attempt to work with these parts, to illuminate them, to help them collaborate, to speak, to see what lies beneath them. Our first existential playground we will be devoted to playing with our parts. After a short parts mapping introductory exercise, a handful of facilitators will offer workshops for us to participate in – as our parts. As we play, some of the questions that will most likely frame our playground are: What are my parts? What are your parts? Do they get along? Should they get along? How should they get along? What does that getting along look like? Is “getting along” an authentic mode of relating? What if they don't want to get along? Do some of my parts deserve to be pushed down or silenced? Do all parts deserve a voice? What if a part is violent or hurtful? Is there another part beneath it that is non-violent or not-hurtful? Does the core of all our parts want peace and love? Or is there no “core” to our parts? Or are these “cores” more messy, uncertain, and a mix of good and bad? Is there a part that bridges all these parts? Is there a self that integrates the parts? Is that “integrator” also a part? Is it parts all the way down?

Early Bird Tickets (until Nov 10th) are $30. Contact for sliding scale options if needed. Tickets can be purchased here. Our event will be located on Zoom, and a ticket gives you access to the entirety of the event. Participants will need to choose 2 of 4 workshops (1 per session).

PURCHASE TICKETS

SCHEDULE

Saturday Nov 21, 3:00-6:30pm EST

3:00 PM Gathering

3:05 PM Parts Meditation

3:30 - 4:30 Session 1
BODY Parts and Tension as an Expression of the Self – Gabrielle Revlock
or
Voice Dialogues: Talking Between Selves – Ilana Simons

4:35 - 5:00 Intermission / Parts Party Break

5:00 - 6:00 Session 2
Inviting our monsters to dance Inviting Our Monsters to Dance – Anna Costa e Silva
or
An Exchange of Masks: Finding Ourselves in Others – Melanie Cohn

6:05 - 6:30 Closing Reflections & Questions

WORKSHOPS

Voice Dialogues: Talking Between Selves
Ilana Simons
Session 1

This workshop is an experiential dive into Voice Dialogue, a therapeutic practice that comes out of the Jungian tradition, in which therapist and client explore the various personalities that live inside us. The idea is that when we grow up into a certain family or culture, certain aspects of our personality get firmly developed, and others get less attended to, or disowned. Growing up in one family structure, you might develop your “Achiever” to a high degree; and in turn, your “Receiver," or the side that can ask for help, gets less attention. But these various sides always live inside us. In Voice Dialogue, a client gets the space to speak from just one of those personalities or energies—without apology, without placing it in context, without explaining. Having used this technique in private practice for a number of years, I know the power of that release. To speak from one side of personality without having to frame it is to honor it and release it. When we are done speaking from that one energy, we move back to the place of the center, which in Voice Dialogue is called Aware Ego. Aware Ego is the wisest form of ME from which we host dialogue among our various selves. In Voice Dialogue, self-acceptance is never the notion that we should uproot or suppress a side of ourself. Each side arose for a certain purpose, and brings a strength. Self-acceptance, or self-love, is when we are receptive to each of our various characters and host useful dialogue or coordination between them.

In this one-hour workshop, I will start with an explanation of the Voice Dialogue technique. I am a psychologist who uses the method in my private practice, which I have had for 10 years. We will experience a few dyads in the group – I will conduct voice dialogue with a few participants, and the group will collectively make observations and add insight. We will then each find one energy inside that calls us – a character of action – and come back to the larger group in character. You will work from just one energy within you, playing that energy out with the group. It’s a tea party in partial self. In the end, we will discuss how living in that energy relieved some pressure, or allowed us to see new aspects of ourselves.

Bio: I am a clinical psychologist who has worked in private practice for 10 years, in NYC, LA and now in Santa FE, NM. I work principally with artists, and Voice Dialogue is a central way in which I practice. I have PhD’s in both literature and psychology and have taught with The School of Making Thinking before, teaching a course in the Video Poem at Abron’s Art Center in 2015. I have also taught literature and writing at New York University, The New School, and the 92nd St Y. I am a filmmaker too, and my films have screened at The Cannes Film Festival, Hyperallergic.com, Poets & Writers website, Animation Block Party, and in Alain de Botton’s School of Life series. I write a blog for Psychology Today and originated Tin House magazine’s online site for video poems, Tin House Reels. I wrote and performed the one-woman show All Together Now at the New York Fringe Festival and am the author of A Life of One’s Own: A Guide to Better Living through the Work and Wisdom of Virginia Woolf (Penguin) http://ilanasimonsart.com/

BODY Parts and Tension as an Expression of the Self
Gabrielle Revlock
Session 1

We will begin by warming up the body, section at a time, through a guided and flowing improvisation. As we do so, we will observe the thoughts and feelings that arise. Which of your parts is present in this moment? And what causes another to enter, or not? We will then dive into a few ways we might organize the body. Inspired by Body-Mind Centering neurocellular patterns, we will explore homologous, homolateral, and contralateral movements. Do these movement patterns resonate with specific parts of the self? How might developmental patterns reflect the complexity or primitive nature of our parts? Might knowing these patterns bring greater physical expressiveness to our various parts? Finally, we will introduce our parts to Jacques Lecoq’s Seven Levels of Tension: Exhausted, Laid Back, Neutral, Alert, Suspense, Passionate and Tragic. What can we discover about the depth of our parts by allowing them to inhabit these tension states? Which states resonate while others challenge our assumptions about how our parts engage with the world? What are each of your parts’ default state of tension? Is there a relationship between muscle tension and identity? If we pay attention to how tension is distributed throughout the body, what might we notice and what might that signify? Our exploration will move us in ways familiar and foreign, opening participants to endless play and possibility. This movement focused workshop will include solo, partner and group reflection through writing and conversation.

Bio: I am a body-based artist whose work often depicts complicated but relatable interpersonal relationships using pedestrian movement vocabulary, abstracted by degrees. I’ve toured to Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Hungary, India, Russia, and been presented at notable US venues including New York Live Arts, The Flea, American Dance Festival, Gibney, Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts, JACK and FringeArts. My work has been supported by grants from the Puffin Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Pennsylvania Council for the Arts, American Dance Abroad, US Department of State and the Independence Foundation. In 2018 I was named ‘Newcomer of the Year’ by tanz, the German journal of ballet, dance, and performance. In 2019 I was an Institute Fellow with the experimental theater company, Target Margin. As a dancer, I’ve performed for Lucinda Childs, Jumatatu Poe, Susan Rethorst, Christopher Williams, Vicky Shick, Bill Young and Jane Comfort. In my role as teacher/facilitator I am on faculty with Movement Research and am a facilitator of the Brooklyn Contact Jam. Other places I’ve taught include: American Dance Festival, Gibney, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Greene Towne School, Bryn Mawr College, Swarthmore College, Abrons Arts Center, The Barnes Foundation, Rowan University, NYU, Drexel University and Vassar College. In 2014 I created CardioCreativity a holistic dance fitness class with Nicole Bindler. It was featured on ABC news and received rave reviews from students for it's fun and community-oriented approach to fitness. I am also the creator of Restorative Contact, a mindful touch-based movement and empathy practice, which is a 5-star Airbnb Experience. http://gabriellerevlock.com/

An Exchange of Masks: Finding Ourselves in Others
Melanie Cohn
Session 2

This experiential workshop creates a space to explore parts of ourselves that may not be our predominant way of being. The workshop is based on games from the arsenal of the Theatre of the Oppressed created by Augusto Boal, adapted for the distance technology of Zoom. Exercises will allow participants to fully feel their predominant way of being in the world and then will offer a space to"try on" physical characters modeled by others. In this way, we will begin to recognize hidden parts of ourselves. Participants will then have the opportunity to reflect and compare these states, exploring the strengths and vulnerabilities of various parts. In order to come to a space to work together, participants are asked to be prepared to turn their cameras on for active interaction within the group.

Bio

Melanie Cohn is a visual artist and the executive director of the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey where she has led the organization in growing its community programs--including the establishment of an art therapy program with New Jersey Veterans Affairs. Previously, she led Staten Island Arts, deepening its programs in art & healing, education, and folk art. She received her MFA from the School of Visual Arts & her BFA from Missouri State University.

Inviting our monsters to dance Inviting Our Monsters to Dance
Anna Costa e Silva
Session 2

The roles and parts we play are usually connected to past experiences and traumas; they are forms to protect ourselves from coming back to difficult emotional places. Behind each mask, there lies a monster who is afraid to be faced and discovered. Monsters are our fears, the parts of us that we deny and that impede us to move forward, restraining our movement to the same forms. “Inviting our monsters to dance” is workshop in which we will get in contact with our shadows and fears in a playful way. Through one on one connection, this workshop will exercise an empathic feel towards our monsters, our parts and one another. Drawing, fictionalizing and dancing will be our paths to lighter and ludic ways of looking at our masks. This is a profound work that happens in a playful manner.

Bio

Anna Costa e Silva is an artist, director and professor from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Owner of an MFA in Visual Arts from the School of Visual Arts, NYC, she works in the intersections between visual arts, performance, social practice and healing. She has won awards such as Terremoto Ubisoft Grant, American Austrian Foundation Prize, FOCO ArtRio, was a PIPA Prize nominee and a finalist for Marcantonio Vilaça Award 2019. Among her solo shows are “Asymptotes” at Caixa Cultural, “I offer company” at Superfície Gallery, “Eter” at Centro Cultural São Paulo and “Purpura”, a mobile performative experience in public places in Rio de Janeiro. She also participated in group shows at institutions such as BienalSur (Buenos Aires), Contemporary Art Center (Vilnius) and Art In Odd Places (NY). Anna has been trained in Transcendental Meditation, Mindfulness, Aura Reading, Reiki and is currently participating on a 3 year formation in Reichian therapy. Since 2019, she teaches ArtLife Practices at Parque Lage visual arts school, an interdisciplinary course that mixes art, life and healing. As a director, she directed the 24 episode TV documentary series “Gaze” about contemporary artists for Arte 1 channel. Anna is represented by Superfície Gallery and has works in public and private collections, including MAR – The Museum of Art, Rio de Janeiro.

GROUP: PERSONA(S)

SCHEDULE*

FEB 8​

INTRODUCTION

FEB 15

PARTS MAPPING

FEB 22

UGLY MUSIC

MARCH 1

PSYCHODRAMA

MARCH 8

NEW RULES

MARCH 15

AUTHORITY IN ​THE BODY

MARCH 22

PARTS PLAY

MARCH 29

FEEDING THE DEMONS

APRIL 5

CLOSURE

BIOS

PAST EVENTS

SYMBIOSIS

FACILITATORS

QUESTION FESTIVALSaturday, November 13th, 10am-10pm EST

10am EST

What is a question?

11am EST

What is attention?

12pm EST

Who are my other selves?

1pm ESTBREAK & Collective Drawing

2pm EST

What choices do we have in this play?

3pm EST

Is your love bad medicine?

4pm EST

Are we there yet?

5pm ESTBREAK & Collective Music Making

6pm EST

What if our shadows could dance?

7pm EST

What is happiness?

8-10pm EST

What's happening now?

Fall 2021 SemesterWorkshops for playfully diving deep into life's biggest questions

PLAYING WITH WHAT​WE LOVE MOST

GAMES WE PLAY​WITH OURSELVES

LOVE GAMES​

CONTACT(more or less)

PLAYING WITH WHAT WE LOVE MOST

INSTRUCTOR

LOVE GAMES

INSTRUCTOR

CONTACT (MORE OR LESS)

INSTRUCTOR

GAMES WE PLAY WITH OURSELVES

INSTRUCTOR

LAYERS

BIOS

THE CAULDRON (Fall 2021)A free, 3-month long, weekly, one-on-one, virtual event for playing with creative facilitation

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #4 THE ROOMEvent: ​Saturday July 10, 12-3pm ESTIntegration: Tuesday July 13, 12-1pm EST

GROUPWednesdays, 7-8:30pm EST, May 19 - July 15

​May 19 Beginnings w/ Aaron Finbloom

May 26 Fortitude! w/ Rosi Greenberg

June 2 The Creature Comforts of Poetry w/ Steven Licardi

June 9 Games for Human Being w/ Janet Howe

June 16 Embodiment Forum w/ Solomon Kruegar

June 23 The Squishy Volume of Now w/ Sarah Ledbetter

June 30 Voice Dialogue: Speaking From Your Parts w/ Ilana Simons

July 7 Here and Now w/ Sybil Ottenstein

July 14 Ensemble Making to Make an Ensemble w/ Ezekiel Baskin

July 15 (Thursday) Closure w/ Aaron Finbloom

SYLLACRUM

Who are we?

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #3 W/HOLES​Friday May 7, 11:00am-2:00pm EST

Developmental Transformations (DvT) Workshop​Thursday April 15, 7-9pm EST

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #2 Characters​Saturday March 6, 3:00-6:00pm EST

The Cauldron​Ongoing, 2-3 months, Sign-up by January 30th

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #1 Parts​Saturday Nov 21, 3-6:30pm EST

FEB 8

AUTHORITY IN
THE BODY

QUESTION FESTIVAL
Saturday, November 13th, 10am-10pm EST

1pm EST
BREAK & Collective Drawing

5pm EST
BREAK & Collective Music Making

Fall 2021 Semester
Workshops for playfully diving deep into life's biggest questions

PLAYING WITH WHAT
WE LOVE MOST

GAMES WE PLAY
WITH OURSELVES

LOVE GAMES

CONTACT
(more or less)

THE CAULDRON (Fall 2021)
A free, 3-month long, weekly, one-on-one, virtual event for playing with creative facilitation

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #4 THE ROOM
Event: Saturday July 10, 12-3pm EST
Integration: Tuesday July 13, 12-1pm EST

GROUP
Wednesdays, 7-8:30pm EST, May 19 - July 15

May 19 Beginnings w/ Aaron Finbloom

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #3 W/HOLES
Friday May 7, 11:00am-2:00pm EST

Developmental Transformations (DvT) Workshop
Thursday April 15, 7-9pm EST

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #2 Characters
Saturday March 6, 3:00-6:00pm EST

The Cauldron
Ongoing, 2-3 months, Sign-up by January 30th

EXISTENTIAL PLAYGROUND #1 Parts
Saturday Nov 21, 3-6:30pm EST