What this is

Deep Puppetry™ uses simple materials like fabric, paper, soft structures, and found objects to create live relational situations that cannot be fully controlled or resolved.

Participants work with movement, hesitation, timing, coordination, attachment, interruption, and response as they emerge through contact with materials and other people.

The practice is slow, structured, relational, and often surprising.

Rather than focusing on performance, symbolism, or self-expression, attention stays with participation itself: how bodies, materials, timing, and context shape what becomes possible in the moment.

As participants work with materials together, subtle relational patterns often become easier to notice:

• urgency appearing in the body

• care becoming directional

• effort increasing without discussion

• responsibility concentrating

• movement happening before conscious choice

Rather than analyzing these moments afterward, the practice slows them down enough to remain in contact with them while they are unfolding.

what participation is like

Sessions are live and facilitated. Structure does much of the work.

Instructions are clear but minimal, movement is simple, and discussion is brief and carefully constrained.

Participants are not asked to perform or explain themselves. They are invited to remain in contact, especially when competence, clarity, or resolution would be easier.

Small, awkward, hesitant movements are sufficient.

Pleasure is allowed. Attachment is allowed. Disappointment is allowed.

The work is often surprising, sometimes funny, and rarely fully comfortable.

And it often stops before it makes sense.

what is practiced

The practice consists of small, repeatable material experiments designed to create real relational dilemmas.

Participants encounter moments where:

• movement is taken over before it is chosen

• timing accelerates or stalls unexpectedly

• care becomes directional

• relation shifts without explanation

• repair is unavailable

Attention repeatedly returns to participation itself: how bodies, materials, timing, and context shape what becomes possible.

participant reflections

“We keep noticing how the work slows us down and how our attention gets wider and more honest. When we stay with the puppet, more becomes visible, and we can actually feel what’s happening instead of trying to make it happen. The atmosphere is gentle and spacious. It’s a place where we can follow what is emerging, even when it is strange or quiet.”
-reflection from a Deep Puppetry cohort

“We entered a space where things didn’t need to be fully formed, where we could delay our automatic responses and stay with what was happening. There was an honesty in the attention, without judgment or praise, that moved me deeply. At times I didn’t understand what was happening. But I began to feel that not knowing didn’t mean I was lost.”
-Anita van Ast

“The general tone and pace of the program allows for time and breath, even in the way Laura explains things, like every thought is a thought in progress. This feels like a demonstration that another pace is possible.”
-Aida Calderon Garvis

“I have learned practices for building relational capacity in ways that do not colonise, extract, consume, define and reduce. Practices that are not about my personal psychology, not about self improvement. I feel I have means now to practice the resistance, the activism of the minor gesture.” -Mel Curtiss

who this is for

This practice attracts artists, educators, facilitators, therapists, organizers, and others working inside relational, educational, artistic, or institutional complexity.

No background in puppetry or performance is required.

What is helpful is a willingness to participate without knowing exactly what will happen or how the experience will resolve.

Current offerings

Deep Puppetry™ is offered as small-group, multi-week practice environments that focus on entering relation, staying with power as it moves, and resisting the impulse to stabilize, take over, or resolve what emerges.

Advanced and invitational work may be offered periodically.

The Deep Puppetry Studio Practice is currently enrolling.

Boundaries and care

This practice can feel unfamiliar, disorienting, or emotionally charged at times. Participants are invited to work within a defined relational container while remaining attentive to their own needs and limits.

Deep Puppetry™ is a practice environment, not a therapeutic replacement or healing modality.

How to engage

Details about upcoming Deep Puppetry™ programs are shared when enrollment opens.