Interplay: Tools for Connection through Improvisational Play

**Please note this event has been postponed until April 3rd!

Interplay (https://interplay.org) is an active, creative way to unlock the wisdom of your body. In this 2 hour workshop open to TAP trainees and all teaching artist and adminstrators connected to the TAP Alliance, we will engage in introductory Interplay practices designed for connection, catharsis, and play. Then, we will reflect on the ways in which these practices can enhance our work as teaching artists.

The workshop will take place at the Marquis Studios office in DUMBO. Wear comfortable clothes :) Reach out to Libby at [email protected] with any questions surrounding the workshop and what to expect.

More about Interplay:

InterPlay is easy, fun, and life changing. It is based in a series of incremental “forms” that lead participants to movement and stories, silence and song, ease and amusement. In the process, we discover the wisdom in ourselves and our communities.

InterPlay integrates body, mind, heart and spirit. Life has become so fragmented. InterPlay helps to pull everything back together so we get more of what we want.

InterPlay is devoted to fun. It teaches the language and ethic of play in a deep and powerful way. If you are convinced that seriousness is the path to inner wisdom, then you might want to look elsewhere. If you would like to become a “recovering serious person,” then InterPlay might be for you.

InterPlay is firmly based in affirmation and looking for the good. You don’t have to think of yourself as creative in order to do InterPlay. We can teach you that part easily. We get far too much criticism in our lives already. We need to spend more time in the warm bath of acceptance.

InterPlay is the perfect antidote to stress and cynicism.

InterPlay is a community of people around the world who speak the shared language of a wide and deep variety of play. It is a body of bodies who enjoy contact and connection. You don't have to dive in the deep end of InterPlay to learn and benefit from it, but it does exist and some wonderful folks are “swimming” there.

InterPlay has been developed by Cynthia Winton-Henry and Phil Porter starting in 1989 and it has spread around the world.

About your facilitators:

Nandita Batheja (she/they) is a facilitator, somatics practitioner, and artist who works across sectors, advocating for liberation and creative being. She believes imagination is crucial to change-work and that play is freedom’s underdog. She is particularly honored to collaborate with YES! World, Equal Justice USA and Circles International to support collective healing, conflict transformation, leadership development and finding new ways forward. Outside of her organizational work, Nandita leads InterPlay, an arts-based body wisdom practice that enlivens her own creativity and sense of community. Finally, led by life's perfect and mysterious ways, Nandita has become a passionate whole-life-doula and teaching assistant with the School of Unusual Life Learning (SoULL), where she studies the somatics of living, aging and dying to better support our collective through these tumultuous times.

Libby Mislan (she/her) is a poet and community based artist living in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA in poetry from Vermont College of Fine Arts in 2018, and has since worked on poetry projects supported by Queens Council on the Arts and New York State Council on the Arts that explore the restoration of health on personal, interpersonal, and societal levels. Libby is a firm believer in the power of the arts as a vehicle for collective transformation. In addition to her own creative process, she designs and facilitates arts projects and workshops to engage communities in creative expression. She works as a teaching artist in New York City public schools with non-profit organizations Community-Word Project, City Lore, and Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Libby is also the Coordinator for the Teaching Artist Project, a program that trains artists in curriculum development and facilitaton skills. She is also a certified leader in InterPlay, and has been in connection to the practice for a decade!

Host or Publisher Teaching Artist Project (TAP) Cohort