What this is

Deep Puppetry™ is a material-based training practice that works with simple objects (fabric, paper, basic materials) to place people inside relational dynamics they cannot easily manage, explain, or control.

The objects are not treated as characters or symbols. They are not stand-ins for the self or for anything else.

Movement doesn’t come from expression or intention. It comes from contact. From timing. From what the material allows and refuses.

When people stop trying to explain what’s happening, certain things tend to appear on their own: urgency in their hands, care turning directional, responsibility concentrating, effort increasing without anyone deciding it should.

The work stays with that.

Participant reflection (not a promise of outcome):

”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

why work this way

Modern systems of power do not reproduce themselves primarily through belief. They reproduce themselves through habit.

People learn how to move quickly, how to take over “just this once,” how to smooth things so the relationship can keep going. These habits often feel neutral or even ethical. Over time, they become automatic.

These habits stabilize extraction, hierarchy, and domination even in ethical or well-intentioned spaces.

Deep Puppetry™ works underneath that layer and slows that process down enough to be felt.

By slowing participation and making relational cost unavoidable, the practice trains the capacity to stay present without becoming an instrument of the system one is inside. This is not symbolic resistance. It is somatic and relational.

What this is not

Deep Puppetry™ is not:

• performance training

• art-making

• therapy

• self-expression

• healing work

• psychological exploration

It does not use interpretation, symbolism, or personal narrative as its primary tools. It does not aim to resolve experience, optimize capacity, or produce clarity.

If something remains unfinished or unresolved, that is not a failure of the work. It is often the point.

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 without consent

• care becomes directional

• relation shifts without explanation

• repair is unavailable

Attention is repeatedly redirected away from explanation and toward participation itself: how bodies, materials, and context are already shaping what is possible.

What participation is like

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

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

Participants are not asked to perform, express, or explain. They are asked to stay, especially when competence, clarity, or meaning 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 comfortable.

And it often stops before it makes sense.


Participant reflection:

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. Witnessing is powerful, especially when we avoid deciding what it means. It feels like we don’t have to explain ourselves.

Many of us feel that thinking happens through our hands and ideas come from doing. The atmosphere is gentle and spacious. It’s a place where we can follow what is emerging, even when it is strange or quiet. A big theme was surprise - what the puppet invited and what we could find when we didn’t get in the way.
-a collaborative testimonial from a full cohort

Who this is for

This practice attracts educators, facilitators, artists, therapists, organizers, and others working inside relational, ethical, or institutional complexity, as well as those who feel uneasy about how quickly care becomes control or urgency becomes harm.

No background in puppetry or performance is required. What is required is a willingness to participate without knowing what will happen or how it will resolve.

Current offerings

Deep Puppetry™ is offered as multi-week, limited-enrollment practice spaces.

The flagship offering is Deep Puppetry™ Level One, an eight-week live online program focused 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.

Boundaries and care

This work can be destabilizing. It is not designed to replace therapeutic, medical, or community support. Participation assumes willingness to work within a defined container without expectation of outcome or resolution.

The practice is developmental, not curative.

How to engage

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