Deep Play Institute

Who am I?  What am I?  What makes me who I am?  What roles do I play out?  What emotions fill me?  What values guide me?  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?

These are some of the core questions of our existence.  The Deep Play Institute’s mission is to use play to bring us into an open-hearted, curious process of discovery of what it means to exist.  We do not aim to find answers to these questions; we aim to endlessly experiment and explore them.  We use play to live the questions.  We use play to try to deepen our connection and curiosity to all parts of ourselves, others, and world.

Our path towards joyful, existential, deep play is that of playing with the rules of our togetherness.  The rules of how we come together make us into who we are, and shape how we think and act in this world.  "Don’t be too loud", "take turns", "be polite", "don’t exaggerate", "speak up".  To play with these rules is to play with who and what we are, and to re-imagine what we can be.  We free associate, we notice what is here-and-now, we only ask questions, we pause, we speak using roles and voices, we break the rules and re-shape new ones.  Every time we gather we enact inquiry which asks: how do I, we, and our worlds change when we we talk, think and feel differently?  How can we be brought deeper into the infinite, playful inquiry of life? How can our togetherness make us more curious, more connected, more aware?  How can this play make our lives more meaningful by turning the most challenging questions of life into a joyous process of discovery?  

Practices that inspire us include: gestalt therapy, process work, psychodrama, internal family systems therapy, group relations conferences, psychoanalysis, community of philosophical inquiry, socratic dialogue, authentic relating, nonviolent communication, circling, coaching, facilitation, clowning, performance art, contact improvisation, social art practices, experimental theatre, LARPs, surrealism, fluxus, pataphysics.

The Deep Play Institute is a U.S. federal 501-c3 non-for-profit corporation.  Our team members and advisory board are located across North America (Montreal, Portland, Nashville, Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland), Europe (Italy, UK), and South America (Brazil).