I am the luckiest Fool alive! In November, I got to spend another couple of days Fooling in the Forest of Dean, with a gorgeous gang of Beyond The Ridiculous Fools!

Beyond The Ridiculous was our company of Fools. We, and a bunch of other wonder-Fools, used to regularly train together in Fooling (solo improvisation where the performer embodies the voices in their head), improvising monthly public shows at Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol. We haven’t done any public performances since the pandemic, but many of us are still finding opportunities to Fool together.

This particular offshoot of Beyond The Ridiculous is especially interested in Fooling in nature and the body as source for creative material. This was the second time we’d had the opportunity to co-create a soul-nourishing Fools retreat together THIS YEAR! How lucky are we? Here’s what happened at the last one in February, for context. 

What’s in this blog?

I want to share some of the richness that we discovered with you, dear reader, in words and pictures, so that you may vicariously feast on our playful discoveries and maybe even take inspiration to find more play and creative inquiry in your own life. 

To support you with this, I’ve sprinkled in some mindful / embodied / creative / nature-connected play invitations for you to try along the way. May they bring you presence, insight and joy.

The Gathering

It was a mystical, dark autumnal night and Dominique and I had to swerve to avoid two huge stags in the misty road. We five Fools (Dominique, Chez, Naomi, Steph and me) gathered around Chez’s dad’s kitchen table in the quaint village of Pillowell in the Forest of Dean. We began unpacking our lives for each other over dinner; sharing glimpses of our study, work, love, grief and current creative obsessions. 

After dinner, we settled down in front of the log fire for a deeper, more focussed heart-share. We brought our needs to the circle and made a list of activities we might want to offer each other, over the following two days. We created a loose schedule that could change as the days unfolded.

Chez filled up the hot water bottles and we all settled into our cosy nests for the night. I got to stay in the sweet little shepherd’s hut with the woodburner glowing and the warm cat purring. You will rarely find a happier Holly than when I get to sleep in some sort of shed with some sort of fire and some sort of furry animal to cuddle. 

Day One

Making art in nature

The clear blue sky called us out into the woods. Wandering through the rainbow of autumn colours, we tuned into our senses. Guided by our intuition, we gathered handfuls of leaves and twigs as we waded deeper into the woods.

A sun-drenched patch of forest beckoned us in and each of us found a sunny spot to make a piece of art with our gathered materials. When the artworks felt complete, we took a tour around the gallery, with each Fool taking 5 minutes to introduce their creation and explain how it represents them in their lives right now.

Invitation: Go out into nature, feel your feet on the ground and soften your eyes, so that you are not looking directly at anything, just letting nature come to you. Walk slowly and notice the air on your skin, the sounds near and far, the colours, shapes and the wafts of aromas. Gather a few natural items - no need to think too much about this, just pick up whatever calls you. Find a spot and create an artwork. Take your time. Notice your sensations, emotions and thoughts as you work/play. When you’ve finished, take a step back and behold what you have created from a distance. How does this represent you in your life right now?

Movement inspired by nature

We traipsed back to the little village hall, where we warmed up our bodies to music. Chez invited us to dive into forest-inspired movement explorations, embodying falling leaves and rising mushrooms, moving in curves and spirals and playing with light and shade. After exploring on our own, we opened a witnessing circle, offering our curious and compassionate attention to each others’ improvised forest-y movement solos and duos. 

Invitation: You can do this outside in nature or where you are right now. Notice the shapes and qualities of movements of the objects that you’re surrounded by. Take those shapes and movement qualities into your body and notice how that makes you feel.

What next?

We paused for a feast and another massive chat, before Dominique led us through a grounding to help us drop back into our bodies. Then we asked our bodies, “What next?” and the answer was clear, “Back to the woods, of course!” 

Invitation: Drop your attention into your body, feel the connection with the ground. Extend your outbreath a little more than you usually would for a few cycles of breath. Notice the whole of your body breathing in and out. Now notice the sensations in your body. What’s here? What needs your attention? Now ask your body “What next?” and see what it says.

Singing the forest back to itself

In the glow of a golden tree, we sang the forest back to itself, using some of the wonderful Collaborative Vocal Improvisation structures I learned from Briony Greenhill at our Deep Play retreat in the summer. 

Invitation: You can do this in nature or wherever you are. Take a moment to ground yourself, using some of the techniques from above. Then notice the shapes and the movement qualities of the things you can see around you. Find the sounds to describe what you can see. Do this out loud if you dare. Notice how that feels in your body.

Fooling in the woods

As the magic hour began, we drifted through the woods, taking it in turns to play 15 minute improvised solos for each other, responding to the fading light, the evening song of the birds, the characterful trees and our inner landscapes.

As the darkness descended, we headed back to the house, where the solos continued, one in the kitchen and one in the sitting room.

Naomi’s bedtime story

After dinner, Naomi treated us to a chapter of her nearly completed PhD thesis, which features her analysis of two Fooling shows she performed with Beyond The Ridiculous. The first one took place in The Wardrobe Theatre in Bristol and the second one happened online on Zoom, during the pandemic. 

It was an absolute delight to be returned to those edgy, wild, unpredictable, beautiful and poignant public performances we used to do at The Wardrobe Theatre, and it was both heart-warming and grief-tinged to remember the online shows we made during the pandemic.

Naomi’s brain is encyclopaedic and it was thrilling to view our work through the many lenses that she’s been exploring through her study. I learned heaps and I can’t wait to read the whole thing! 

Day Two

Yesterday's big blue open sky was painted over with drizzly damp grey. We took it as a sign to turn inwards, to trundle over to the village hall and set up camp for the day.

After a few tracks to get ourselves into our bodies, we had a check-in and made a plan. To help us connect more with our bodies and each other, Chez led us through a somatic movement exploration.

Chez’s Somatic Movement Exploration

We began solo, lying down in our own spaces on the floor and surrendering our weight into the earth. Chez invited us to notice sensations in our bodies. We began moving with the sensations, following our impulses and letting them fall away, returning to stillness, before finding another sensation and starting again.

In pairs, we continued this exploration, with one person (A) continuing to move with their sensations and the other (B) offering touch to accentuate the movements.

After a while, (A) could then choose whether to go with (B)’s touch or push against it (resist).

Finally, (B) could choose to take away the touch, from time to time, whilst (A) tried to keep a sense of (B)’s touch in their body while they moved.

When this was complete, we switched over roles and eventually moved into duets, where both (A) and (B) could offer and respond to each others’ touch. Eventually we moved into one big group of movers and touchers. 

Invitation: Hey, you could do the first part of this exploration right now, if you like. Just clear a space on your carpet and lie down, or do it sitting up - I dare you! Or alternatively find a friend and try the whole thing, making sure you spend a bit of time talking about what’s OK and not OK touch-wise, before you begin.

Phatty Fools

For the rest of the day, we did “Phatty Fools” for each other. A Phatty Fool is a long period of time improvising solo on “stage” (there was no stage, but everyone chose the part of the village hall that they wanted to play in). For this retreat we each had 30 minutes play time.

Using our extensive performance vocabulary, we could move, sing, be still, embody our parts, chat with the audience, or not, interact with the site and the objects in the space, tell real life stories, make shit up and trust ourselves to craft never-to-be-seen-again performance pieces for each other, moment by moment. 

We offered each other support by being a fully focussed compassionate audience and offering live vocal / ensemble support when needed. 

I’m not going to tell you the content of our Phatty Fools because our play on our private retreats is strictly confidential! This allows us to explore deep and vulnerable themes within the safe container of the group. 

What I can say is the Phatty Fools had a deep and reverent sense of ritual, punctuated by an array of creative farting and sporadic drum and bass music emanating from a distant valley. Each Fool took their space and expressed what needed to be expressed. Our performance pieces were epic, touching, revealing, courageous and hilarious in equal measure.

Takeaways

I feel so blessed to have had this time with this gang of wonder-women and in such a beautiful setting. What a treat! I absolutely love residential retreats. Away from the everyday, the sacred bubble provides so many opportunities to explore community and creativity and where the two intersect. 

This particular gang has a 10 year history of playing together in this way and this has given us a huge shared language of play, an intricate knowledge of each other's internal casts and so much mutual care and respect. The safety and bravery this creates allows us to take huge risks, exploring our creativity and discovering new ways to express our inner worlds. We learn so much from and with each other.

Every time we do these retreats, we move deeper into shared responsibility, now easefully passing the baton of leadership between us, like a well-rehearsed dance. This is a huge deal for me - as a recovering responsibility junkie. Even in the space between this retreat and our last one in February, I have noticed more ease and spaciousness around my ability to step back and allow others to lead / hold me. 

As well as these two Fools retreats, I have co-created three other creative retreats with different groups of collaborators this year. These co-created retreats feel like a vital part of my healing and re-training, from Lone Wolfism to becoming an equal Community Member. I feel so blessed to have had all these opportunities to learn and practice different ways of being in groups - it feels like such a big key to recovering from life-long patterns of boom and bust / perpetual cycles of burn out!

Fooling in nature makes TOTAL sense to me. We ARE nature, it’s where we belong! This time, a few of us brought HUGE themes with us and on that first day, nature held us, inspired us and soothed us. It felt like a beautiful collaboration, I hope the woods felt a sense of our appreciation! I’d like to offer a Fooling in nature retreat for people who have completed my 5-day Fools School next summer - watch this space for news on that…

I was really grateful to Dominique and Chez for continuing to introduce somatic explorations to our Fools toolkit. These kinds of body-based explorations, using both meditation and movement, feel like a great way to discover parts through the body. I’m now training in Somatic IFS with Susan McConnell and will be offering an advanced Fools training, exploring where Fooling meets Somatic IFS in February. 

I was delighted to get a chance to share some of Briony Greenhill’s collaborative vocal improvisation (CVI) structures with the gang - CVI and Fooling feel like a very juicy combination and I’d like to explore that more... I will be offering a 5-day workshop called ‘Performance and Parts’ for experienced CVI practitioners in collaboration with Briony Greenhill in April. I may also offer an exploration of Fooling + Voice for people who have completed my Fools 5-day later on in the year…

I really enjoyed doing both of my Fooling performances - I felt more ease and pleasure on stage than I have done in a long time. This bodes well, as I will be presenting a performance lecture at the British Association of Dramatherapy conference in January! Eeek!

It feels really important to have these private practice spaces, where I get to test out the thing I teach, away from the pressure of having to be good at it! It not only keeps me sharp as a performer, but also makes me more empathetic to my students when I teach. It’s an absolutely bonkers thing to do - to stand on an empty stage with no script, no plan and no map, but the life-affirming and life-changing things that can happen when Fools feel safe enough to step off the cliff into the unknown…

If you’re interested in jumping off the cliff into the Fools work, I will be offering more 5-day Fools Schools later on in 2026. The best way to find out about them is to join my mailing list at the bottom of this page. 

You are more likely to get into my 5-day Fooling courses if you’ve worked with me before. To that end, I am now offering a weekend introduction called Play, Presence and Parts. I’ll be doing that in Bristol, Norwich and Sheffield in spring 2026.

If you’re interested in collaborating with me to offer a residential Fools retreat, get in touch!