InterPlay with Ruth Schowalter

We are together in a room without walls, yet we feel connected. We are women from eight different countries engaging in online “embodied play” in the spaces of our own homes, offices, or classrooms. We are from China, Turkey, Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States listening to our body wisdom, moving, and telling our stories. We are Global SIS: InterPlay, and we are gracing each other’s lives across various times on the world clock in the internet’s ethersphere by engaging in InterPlay! GLOBAL SIS PLAYGROUND: MEETING WITHOUT WALLS. December 2019  "Last Saturday was my first time participating in an online Global SIS meeting and also my first experience with InterPlay. One word comes to mind when I think about these moments shared with women around the world: beauty. Women from different backgrounds, ethnicities, and cultural identities, sharing, learning, and listening to themselves and others. It felt tribal in a way. In a great way. I felt l...

What gifts did 2019 bring you? What do you want to savor and remember from this past year? What do you want to release? Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) of InterPlay Atlanta played with these questions at their December "play and potluck."  "PRESENCE-ING" OURSELVES. Having our potluck first instead of our InterPlay playshop as we normally do posed us with the challenge of getting "our body spirits" into the room after driving in Georgia traffic and then relaxing into connecting with one another. So we had a mini-InterPlay warm up before diving into our feast! We did two rounds of saying our names, the first with our names and the place or country we identify with. I love it when someone surprises us with multiple countries or "Planet Earth." More than 30 women from around the world came together for an evening of connection, learning, and inspiration in the home of a Turkish SISter, Guldane, in Alpharetta, Georgia, USA. We had wo...

Sustaining International Sisters October 2019, Planning Committee. Our first “Global” SIS brought tears to more than one sister’s eyes. Some tears were of self-discovery, some of loss caused by the distance after returning home to their countries from Atlanta, some of recognition of how we can connect with each other from around the world through the “mysterious” ways of InterPlay no matter the difference in culture and languages.   Imagine women from around the globe coming together online to do InterPlay together! That’s what we Sustaining International Sisters (SIS) did on Saturday, November 16 th , 2019! “Global” Sustaining International Sisters (SIS): InterPlay had its first playdate online! Yes! Using computer technology! To play together we had to juggle a world clock with a vast range of time differences! We two Global SIS facilitators, Canan Arikan and I (Ruth Schowalter), live on Eastern Standard (EST) Time in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, and coordinated the start ...

Happy First Birthday to Sustaining International Sisters  & Happy 30th Anniversary to InterPlay! “There is a ‘we’ in me,” writes Cynthia Winton-Henry, co-founder of InterPlay.* That is, “the group” is within each one of us. However, what happens to the “we” when the individual is a refugee, a person seeking asylum, or an international visiting the United States and is feeling like a fish out of water?  Here in Atlanta, our InterPlay community is offering a way for individual international and American women to create a new sense of “groupness,” a new “we” in their “me.” We have created Sustaining International Sisters (SIS), a 3-hour monthly “play and potluck” so that women can begin to weave themselves into a new communal fabric. Each month, we are figuratively and literally stepping across cultural boundaries through movement, storytelling, using our voices in fun and surprising ways and sharing an international lunch together. The InterPlay tools an...

EMBODYING THE PLANT OR ANIMAL. Participants were invited to become seaweed moving in the ocean current.   Alligators, dolphins, ghost crabs, pelicans, live oaks, and wasps - oh my! InterPlay Atlanta, Emory University, and the Georgia Coast Atlas all partnered to offer “Communicating the Science of the Georgia Coast,” a  fun- and facts-filled event as part of the 2019 Atlanta Science Festival.   This two-hour “playshop” took place on Friday, March 15 th  at the Little Five Points Community Center Café. From 7:00 to 9:00 PM, Certified InterPlay Leader Ruth Schowalter co-facilitated this highly interactive and energetic science communication workshop for adult and teen participants with her husband — scientist and author Dr. Anthony J. Martin. As a Georgia coast expert, Tony offered “micro-lectures” about its animals, plants, and ecosystems, while Ruth engaged participants in improvisational storytelling and movement-oriented activities that reinforced ...