Fluid Cartographies: An Exploration of Body, Voice, Psyche & Performance Ritual

This intensive will investigate the space between somatic-transformative practice and performance, offering a bridge between radical expression, psychological inquiry, and collective art-making. The workshop will begin on Friday morning with an opening circle and agreements, and then transition into “Aquasoma”, a practice of working through the fluid intelligence of breath, movement and voice, centered around spinal energy. Saturday will be devoted to “Clearing”, a practice that focusing on group choreographed constellations of inner parts. On Sunday these two practices will become raw material to create a performance ritual for a wider audience.

The intensive hopes to offer three key takeaways for participants. First, to guide participants on a deep journey of self-expression, inquiry, play, and transformation, helping us connect more fully with our bodies, voices, and the vast imaginative potential of our psyches. Second, to provide a unique opportunity to co-create a performative ritual, sharing one's discoveries in a powerful, transformative space with a wider audience. Finally, the collaborative process aims to fosters a sense of connection, and liberatory friendship, building resilience through play and creating together.

Friday Workshop: Aquasoma ~ Fluidity of Spine, Breath, Sound

In a world increasingly disconnected from embodied wisdom, this practice offers a return to our inherent capacity for fluid, multidimensional awareness. By weaving together elements of yoga, qigong, dance, and voice it creates a bridge between ancient somatic wisdom and playful expression. Through invoking creative awareness into our movement, we remember our body's natural intelligence and invite its capacity to channel both earthly and cosmic energies. This practice serves as a gateway to both personal embodiment and collective awakening through fluid body resonance. The workshop is scaffolded, with each stage deepening attunement: Spinal Awakening: Explore waves, spirals, and undulations, awakening the spine as a living channel between Earth and Sky. Breath Integration: Synchronize breath and movement, creating dynamic meditations that open pathways to creative flow and embodied presence. Sound Exploration: Blend breath, sound, and movement into unified expression, accessing primordial consciousness. Relational Expansion: Transition into partner and group work, cultivating collective resonance through shared movement and energy play.

Saturday Workshop: Clearing ~ Co-Directing the Psychodramatic Field

Clearing, a practice in its youthful stages of development, is a variation on psychodramatic improvisation. The practice begins with the player, or protagonist, standing before the group and spontaneously embodying an inner part—an emotion, image, or energy. The protagonist then invites a group member to step in and embody the part they unfolded. As new inner parts emerge in relation to the first, the protagonist embodies and names them and calls on additional participants to play these roles. Soon a living, dynamic tableau of interconnected parts emerge, and as this happens the protagonist begins subtly directing this constellation through techniques such as alternating dynamics, spatial levels, improvisation, doubling, and wildness to enrich the living tableau. The goal is clarity as we begin to see our inner world projected onto a living map. Each moment involves waiting, sensing, seeing, and then subtly shifting the emergent system to see what happens if we step deeper into a part, or further away, or nudge a part to come slightly closer. The practice encourages experimentation as a kind of “tinkering” - not for the sake of experimentation - but for liberation. For the sake of seeing ourselves more clearly, and unfolding the beautiful imaginative depths of our psyches. Our day on Saturday will begin with learning some key practices that inform the clearing practice. We will draw from Fool Expression - a solo practice of embodying and exploring the various “masks” or inner parts that make up our personalities, performed in front of a witnessing group. We will also draw from Psychodrama - and learn techniques such as doubling, mirroring, working with allies, role reversals, etc. The afternoon will solely be devoted to exploring Clearing diving into the practice with the aim of beginning to establish some fluency in the technique.

Sunday: Preparing for Performance

On Sunday we will present the group with a score for our evening performance. This score will be an amalgam of the techniques and practices from both workshops. Sunday will be devoted to learning this score, and then performing it together in front an audience at 5pm.

–🌾— PRACTICALS DETAILS —🌾–

Structure: Friday May 16th 10am-5pm | Saturday May 17th 10am-5pm | Sunday May 18th 10am-5pm, with a performance from 5-7pm
We will be taking breaks throughout the day including a 1-hour lunch break.

Price: Tuition price is tiered based on an sliding scales of income/subsistence. All prices are in CAD.
Financially Abundant $200 / Financially Secure 2 $150 / Financially Strained $100

Sliding Scale: Please try to reasonably and honestly select the price that reflects your economic situation. If you are unable to find a price that is suitable for you, please get in touch [thedeepplayinstitute@gmail.com]. We are committed to covering our basic costs, while also making this possible for everyone who needs it.

Venue: The intensive will be located at the Rupert Community Centre in Wakefield, QC.

Travel & Accommodations:

The easiest way to get to Wakefield for out-of-town guests is by car. There are numerous hotels and airbnbs in the area. For participants who want to explore more affordable but rugged options, the venue will allow us to use the space for the evening and participants are welcome to sleep on the floor of venue (like indoor camping!). There is a kitchen and bathrooms, but no shower (we will work something out for an evening shower at one of the facilitator's apartments). Busses travel from Gatineau to Wakefield, and we are available to pickup participants from the Wakefield bus stop. DPI is not able to not able to refund any travel or housing costs in the unlikely event of cancellation.

Language: This event will be conducted in English.

Maximum Participants: 12

Cancellation Policy: Refunds are available up to 30 days before the event - minus a $20 processing fee. After this time we are unable to provide a refund for the event. Partial refunds might be given if a cancellation takes place under extenuating circumstances (e.g. a death of a 1st or 2nd degree family member, serious non-preventable illness or accident requiring hospitalization). Refunds in such cases remain at the discretion of the local organizers and will be decided on a case to case basis according to the timing of the cancellation and other factors.

Partial Attendance: Given the intimacy, trust building and shared creative practice inherent to this intensive, we highly recommend that all participants plan to stay for the entire weekend. We may be able to make accommodations for participants to end early, or miss a section of one day; however, late arrivals cannot be accommodated.

NOTE ON EMOTIONAL REGULATION: This intensive may explore the emotional landscapes that unfold within a group, and is not well designed for majorly flooded emotion from outside the group. If at this moment in your life you find you are highly activated by something you cannot set down, it may be best not to participate at this time. We understand that therapy can be very expensive and trusted therapists are hard to find, and there might be some temptation to come to this group for that kind of care, but it is not designed for that kind of individual attention, and the ask is that you have some settledness and calm available to you so we can play deeply together. Many of the practices we will explore are designed to cultivate vulnerability, with its pleasures and its hardships. The practices can surface conflict and hurt that might conventionally be quieted or minimized. It is common to experience triggers of past psychological wounds within this practice, and this should be accounted for as a possibility. The intimacy of these practices might be compared to the way one's deepest romantic relationships sometimes surface one's most challenging psychological material. The facilitators will use techniques to contain and care for what arises, but will not be able to provide ongoing care for emotional fallout. The invitation is to be watchful of one's own safety and opt out in little and big ways as needed, and to have emotional processing methods in place (such as therapy, meditation, journaling, processing with friends, etc) that can help you learn with and from what happens at the intensive.

About the Deep Play Institute The Deep Play Institute is a nonprofit organization committed to exploring life’s deepest questions through transformative play. DPI’s facilitators – therapists, artists, coaches, and philosophers – aim to use play to bring people into an experiential questioning of what it means to exist. Each program that DPI runs is a unique container, creatively constructed and inspired by practices that include: Gestalt therapy, Process Work, Psychodrama, Internal Family Systems Therapy, Tavistock Group Relations, Relational Psychoanalysis, Authentic Relating, Nonviolent Communication, Circling, coaching, performance art, contact improvisation, experimental theater, LARPs, surrealism, existential games, and various schools of meditation.

About the Facilitators: Aaron and Kai met in Montreal in 2014 being silly goons on a dance floor. Henceforth they played, collaborated and galavanted around town for many years, and then parted ways to different parts of the world. At this critical point in time, they are returning to Quebec, their friendship homelands, to offer their wisdom harvest since their departure.