Deep Puppetry
Certificate Program
Deep Puppetry is an applied puppetry approach focused on the personal process of making and ensouling objects in order to explore and divest from our learned orientation toward oppression, exploitation, abjection, and hierarchy and to practice creating the conditions for development, liberation, mutuality, and animism. Earn your certification to learn how to engage with puppetry in radical depth for yourself, your family, your work, and your community.
"I am absolutely amazed and dumbfounded by the richness, healing and complexity that this work evokes. This class has changed my life. I am so very grateful that you are so brave and brilliant and radical to have created this place to learn and play and heal and grow."
-Alissa DiFranco
On puppetry
Puppetry uses symbolic and aesthetic language, reducing reliance on verbal expression and inviting a new kind of knowing: imaginal, liminal, metaphorical, poetic, and nonlinear. In puppetry, we experience a plurality of consciousness and identity, an interdependence of self and matter, a reimagining of the relationship between subject and object, and an opportunity to create new power dynamics within the context of a creative container.
To create and ensoul an object is to experience a kind of trans-embodiment wherein the object becomes a proxy location for our own development. When I can't breathe, my puppet can breathe. When I can't orient, my puppet can orient. When I can’t respond to my environment, my puppet can. As I hold the puppet, the puppet holds the space of that which is Not Me, and by doing so, opens an avenue into my own becoming.
Play, pleasure, and the "friendship of created things" (René Char) are by nature anti-capitalist. Puppetry allows us to blur the lines of common binaries, release our intense fixation on “truth,” and challenge the pervasive lens of cause and effect. Puppet animation confronts us with difficult questions around who and what is allowed to exist, who and what is abject in our cultures and in ourselves, and where is life, death, and the threshold between them. Puppetry incites empathy and works to decenter the self, transitioning us away from isolation and into solidarity. The puppet helps us straddle the line between Self and Other, Me and Not Me, thereby creating a pathway toward our own development as people and as a culture.
Puppetry is an act of creation, of meditation, of focus, of deep listening, of embodied empathy, of divination, of surrendering to the inherent life and goodness in all things. It is going in to go through. It is an acknowledgement through action that this world resists definition. We humans used to know this. In Indonesia, puppet masters were considered priests. It was shamans the world over who were the puppeteers around fires and in ceremonies. Eurocentric modernity made us skeptical of this power inherent to puppetry, loath to embrace enchantment as reason and experience as evidence, and fearful of what cannot be contained, defined, or categorized.
But puppetry, like prayer, refuses to be sidelined forever, to stay relegated to the status of unsophisticated and obsolete.
No, puppetry is returning. We need palpable invitations into poetic imagination if we are to imagine a world better than this one. To learn that we are agents of change, we must create environments where we can affect each other and perform ourselves in new ways. We long to enter a gateway of connection that is symbolic and playful, that challenges the separation not only between spiritual realms and material reality but between you and me. We long to live and give life, even the illusion of life, to someone else with little more than a touch of our fingers and the breath in our bodies.
"It goes from nebulous and chaotic to suddenly having a face that opens a door. Specifically, to see something die and return to the earth and then to suddenly see the crumpled up paper lifeless or just killed and then stillness and wonder and something then is that a head? And those are feet? And to get to know it and move with it. All with sound. That touches and heals something really important with people’s fear of death/change/climate change. But with this technique, death wasn’t as scary; as I witnessed and experienced transformation after transformation, it was a way to experience the infinite (from monster to napkin to something else completely). You and the puppet together are embodying this change. That feels uplifting and alive in part because you’re not trying to get anywhere. Anywhere unfolds from anywhere."
-Brian Katz, on Deep Puppetry
student work
the details
how does it work
The eight-class, online curriculum is a combination of hands-on experiential work, supplemental reading, and in-class instruction, discussion, and collaboration. This program offers space for you to apply the material to your particular work context, artistic voice, and imagination.
Absolutely no experience in plastic or performing arts needed for this program.
what is required
To obtain your certificate, you must attend at least 75% of classes and complete your homework assignments. Recordings will be available for one week after each class. The total time investment is 24 hours of class and approximately 10 hours outside of class.
who is it for
Perfect for teachers, therapists, community workers, activists, parents, artists, art practitioners, puppeteers, group facilitators, changemakers, and folks who are just plain curious.
Max 10 students.
student work
Many of the strategies of oppression and exploitation are embedded in our consciousness as social myth, a space that is most receptive to creative metaphor and dreaming itself into a new reality of liberation, compassion, and interdependence. Spaces of self-reflection and metaxis create the capacity for collaborative action by the emergent selves for the emergent world. We practice in the aesthetic reality in order to modify the social reality.
“I got many things out of [the Deep Puppetry program]. The main one I’ve seen operating in my life so far is a greater comfort with uncertainty and with allowing forces to act through me. I also seem to have more equanimity and space to hold for allowing others their autonomy. Thank you for putting this course together and for leading us through such a rich exploration!”
-Jenn Johnson
what you will learn
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Why and how puppetry is ideally suited to help us divest from oppression, control, and exploitation
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Why puppetry is revolutionary and a tool for liberation
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How puppetry assists in development and growth
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The philosophical and psychological context of therapeutic puppetry
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How puppetry builds relationships and creates empathy
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How puppetry reimagines hierarchy and power structures
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How to use puppetry off the stage as personal and/or spiritual practice and as a divination tool
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How puppetry integrates otherness, contributes to disability justice, and seeks to welcome the abject
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A variety of construction methods and which lend themselves particularly well to personal exploration and community building
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Where puppetry becomes applied animism and embodiment practice
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The nuts and bolts (and a few bells and whistles) of object animation
“I loved the [Deep Puppetry program]. It opened me back up to wonder and awe, and imagination. Removing a block to creativity, showing me a way to access exploration and creation without overly planning or getting stuck in my head. It has opened my mind to the use of applied theatre in general, including puppetry, and wondering what's possible in sharing it and using it to create change and connection in the world today.”
-Zachary Koval
student work
“I whole-heartedly enjoyed the [Certificate in Deep Puppetry] course. You created an incredibly therapeutic space for the group to learn, explore, express themselves, challenge and become. This felt remarkably quick given that the group was new, online and time-limited. I am coming away with a new-found passion and curiosity for all expressive arts, not only puppetry. I appreciated the depth of analysis around what makes puppetry therapeutic and anti-oppressive. I have formed so many new theoretical connections between puppetry and psychology, especially as you opened with Vygotsky, who happens to be one of my favourite psychologists. It was like this course was perfect for me! But you also balanced this with lots of time spent on the practical, experiential, reflective work. As someone without a background in performance or art (besides being a child) I could never have imagined feeling so comfortable in sharing performance and art with others. Now I love it. I could even imagine myself becoming addicted to it! The course far exceeded my initial hopes, as I now feel connected to my own creativity in ways that I believe opens up new ways of working, relating, being, living! Again, in 8 short weeks this is a remarkable intervention and I am excited to seek out more experiences that help this part continue to grow. As a harsh critic of all therapeutic modalities, this is a big win for me, and gives me a lot of hope in my work and life. A sincere thank you for creating this experience. I hope to work with you again and again!”
-Dalia Levi
Study Deep Puppetry
Saturdays
6pm-9pm Central European Summer Time
12pm-3pm Eastern Daylight Time
April 27
May 4, 11, 18
June 1, 8, 15
Registration closes April 24
Cost: 599 USD
Payment plan: three months at 225 USD per month
Partial scholarships and limited sliding scale options available depending upon enrollment.
Contact me below.
Registration is now closed.
