Playful Resilience

InterPlay Program Description - Tatamagouche Centre - May 3-5, 2024

We invite you to join us for a weekend of InterPlay - a chance to connect more deeply to our personal, collective and ancestral body wisdom as a resource for these deeply transformative, turbulent times.

Share in the simple magic of embodied connection through story, sound, movement and stillness. Bring your sorrow, your silly, your sage - the fullness of you - and together we will uncover the power of play as a source for building inner and community resilience.

InterPlay is a powerful practice rooted in PLAY and CONNECTION to the wisdom within. It invites us to play with our birthright - yes birthright - of word, song, storytelling, movement, dance and stillness. It is a way to invite more connection, ease, affirmation, joy and resilience into our lives - within ourselves, our communities and with the earth.

By engaging with the incremental and playful forms (practices) and tools (philosophies) of InterPlay, we invite the stories within us to rise up and out of the body. Our shared improvisation and play can support us in drawing on our own inner body wisdom, learn from our lived experience and build a greater sense of capacity, connection and solidarity to navigate personal and collective challenges.

During our play and rest time together, we will:

• Invite the whole of ourselves to come and play - our inner child, sage, grump, clown, serious person, dreamer, community weaver
• Co-create a playing & learning environment that welcomes the multiplicity and diversity of our lived experiences & the wisdom of our ancestors
• Take the time to express what is alive within us through sound, word, story, movement, dance and stillness
• Share, witness & notice with one another in our playing
• Release stress, rest, be still & resource together
• Gain affirmation & new insight to support our day-to-day lives and communities
• Connect with the land - the Mi'kma'ki lands at Tatamagouche, Takǔmegoochk, the "meeting of the waters” - to give gratitude, learn from her abundant wisdom and nurture out inherent earthliness
• Learn more about how to take care of our bodies, and one another, while taking action toward a more just, free world for all

This InterPlay Retreat will be particularly powerful for those of us who feel deeply connected to the earth and our wider sense of humanity. With the current social, political and environmental destruction and harm we are experiencing and witnessing, our body-spirits can be overcome by despair, fear, rage, exhaustion and loss of faith. We come together to bear witness to one another - both our grief and glory - and in our playing, give space to new breath, creative inspiration and hope along our journey of equity and transformation.

Who & What is Playful Resilience?

This InterPlay Retreat is led by natty & Agnotti who are part of the InterPlay Playful Resilience Collective. The Playful Resilience Collective was formed by a collective of queer, diverse, intergenerational InterPlayers from around the world. We are folx rooted in and committed to practices of social justice, community healing and celebration. We draw on our personal, collective and ancestral wisdoms to guide us in how to live into and embody the values of a free, just and radically loving global community.

Seeded in the early day of the COVID pandemic, we sought to bring play and levity amidst those challenging, fracturing, humbling times. We continue to remain committed to the power of our silly-sages during these on-going times of human and environmental devastation and loss. We are with you in the need to slow down, access creativity and find new and ancient ways of connecting and resourcing ourselves for our lives and work of collective emancipation and systemic transformation.

Everyone is welcome to come play….

We warmly welcome folx of all grooves and moves in life to come join us.

Feel too serious? Your stiffened self is welcome. Come shake it out with us.

Feel shy in expressing yourself? Your quiet self is welcome. Come play incrementally with us.

Feel too un-playful? Your exactly-as-you-are self is welcome. Come tap into your inherent playfulness with us.

Feel like you are craving play? Your exuberant self is welcome. Come unleash your fullness with us.

InterPlay is a practice that any body can do! No specific arts or movement experience needed, your life experience is plenty! We whole-heartedly welcome you as you are. The workshop space is one that strives to be socially just and inclusive to all, taking into consideration diversity around age, race, culture, gender, sexuality, class, beliefs and all the other “isms”.

What to Bring Along

• Your authentic self!
• Water bottle
• Comfortable clothes

Origins of InterPlay

InterPlay is a worldwide community of artist-activists who believe in the power of creative expression for community transformation. Developed over the last thirty-five years by Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry, InterPlay is a practice that teaches groups and individuals to tap into their artistic authority to connect to oneself, others and community. For more info, visit www.interplay.org We also honour the many indigenous wisdom traditions that have been attuned to the wisdom of creative expression in and for community well-being for millenia.

Program Cost

We acknowledge that there are systemic barriers that make it difficult to participate and access programs. We work to support those who are unable to pay the full cost of programs, while providing a living wage for facilitators and covering the costs of learning programs.

We are reserving 50% of reduced barrier fee payments specifically for Black, Indigenous, People of Colour (BIPOC) to support greater access to their personal, familial and community rest, health and well-being. This is in acknowledgement of the pervasive and systemic barriers which historically, and currently, impact these communities in accessing equitable social, political and economic resources - and play time! 

We name the true program fee to allow those who are able to pay this cost to do so. We don’t want financial barriers to prevent anyone from participating in a learning program so we also offer 3 tiers of reduced barrier fees for each registrant to choose. For those who are able to pay more, please consider choosing the "generous" tickets. This helps to subsidize others to participate. You will also receive a charitable donation receipt.

Tatamagouche Centre is grateful to United Way of Colchester County, Telus Foundation, Edwards Family Foundation for funding to support youth, BIPOC applicants, LGTBQIA2S+, applicants with disabilities, mental health barriers to participate in learning programs.

The quirky duo of Agnotti & natty have been swapping stories and clowning around with one another since 2016 as leaders of an immersive 2-week InterPlay Art & Social Change Program in Oakland, California. They are now part of a wider collective of queer, social justice, international InterPlay leaders who formed the Playful Resilience Collective - offering InterPlay workshops and retreats ripe and ready to dance with the beauty and complexity of being human during these times!

Natalie Abdou - natty (she/they) I am a community facilitator, artist, earth-tender and life-long learner who loves to reflect, share and learn alongside others for the purpose of community healing and change. I have spent the last 15+ years collaborating with diverse communities in North America and Egypt, co-creating learning environments that embrace a vision of solidarity, social justice and change from the inside-out. Through the blending of participatory, creative and value-based learning, I support processes of conflict transformation, building communities of belonging and collaborative leadership. I experience embodied and arts-based practices as portals for our body-wisdom to emerge, in service of personal, collective and systemic transformation. My spiritual and creative journey weaves themes of ancestral-earth based wisdom and healing in service of paradigm shifting visions.

I am freelance consultant as Weaving Connections (Toronto, Nova Scotia & Egypt) and collaborate with Bloom Consulting (Toronto), Branch Out Theatre (Toronto), Interplay (Oakland, CA) and various movements/organizations working toward justice in Egypt. I have a MEd in Adult Education and Community Development at OISE.

I give thanks to the various lands and first peoples that are a part of my lineage, growth, sustenance and being – Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishnabeg, Haudenosaunee and Huran Wendat (Toronto), Mi’kmaq (Nova Scotia), Ohlone (California) & Nubian (Egypt/Kemet).

Agnotti (they/she) grew up in Chicago and is passionate about the intersection of social justice, community dialogue, and performing arts. They facilitate workshops employing a variety of pedagogical techniques such as InterPlay, Theatre of the Oppressed, Clowning and Devising. Since 2013, they have been hired by InterPlay to produce and facilitate events around the world as well as becoming their Development Director in 2020. After several years of working for Opera-Matic as a performer, they stepped into the role of Co-Director in 2021. They are also freelancing for a number of theatre companies and schools, as a teaching artist, performer, and facilitator offering workshops in drama, puppetry, clowning, storytelling, musical theater, and movement. Recently, she has taken her work around the globe, facilitating workshops in Vietnam, India, Chile, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, and Germany.