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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

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. 

Income Tier 1: $150

Income Tier 2: $100

Income Tier 3: $75

BIPOC tuition $75 (tier 3)

For guidance on which tier you are invited to pay at please see this diagram.

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, Tavistock Institute, Relational Psychodynamic Therapy, 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.

Netta Sadovsky, MSW, LSW (she/her) is an artist and social worker living in Philadelphia, PA. 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, Theater of the Oppressed, and Internal Family Systems, and makes artwork that borrows from and experiments with these practices under the moniker Suso Phizer.

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.

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.