👋 Greetings, dear readers.

Happy Lunar New Year!! 🔥🐴 May the Fire Horse encourage us in our endeavors. Meanwhile, the rain in the UK is still tormenting our dreams of pleasant days, but some manage to find bits of joy. Last week, Acaprov had the most wholesome and supportive audience you can imagine, and True Heart Theatre celebrated the Lunar New Year with a warm Playback Theatre performance.

Speaking of Playback Theatre, this week the focus will once again be on leaning into it. Of course, it’ll be applicable to improv as well. I want to tackle the story form a bit more, especially on the occasions where the conductor calls for a long form but the content is actually quite short.

When the story is very vague and short, that might be scary for the performing team. However, this could be a blessing in disguise, a blank canvas to play with. As long as we honor the essence of the story we should be free to build something beautiful out of it.

First, identify the elements that are already in the story: emotions, objects, and potentially scarce situations. Learning how to atomize a story will be very helpful.

Second, identify the theme or themes. What is the story about? You can even find different universal truths that might be relatable to the story.

Once you have all the few elements set in front of you, lying on your imaginary sandbox. Tackle them one by one, and take your time exploring every single one.

If you are working with an object mentioned in the story, or one that you symbolically introduced, be very specific in the descriptions. Is it heavy? What is the texture? Is it in mint condition or is it dented? Throw in colors, smells, and sounds. Doing that with grace and stage presence can grant a compelling performance.

When working with themes and concepts, don’t just throw them in the air. I’ve seen performances where the actor just says the word out in the air while waving a piece of fabric. Sometimes this might look something out of a teenage GCSE drama.

If you want to acknowledge a theme within the re-enactment, work with it. Instead of parading around the stage saying “Love!” or “Justice!”, take your place downstage and recite a short poem about it or sing a verse fueled by it. In short, build something to showcase that concept.

Working with the different concepts and elements of the story as an ensemble also lifts the weight from the teller actor’s shoulders.

How to do this in an orderly and neat way is a topic for another time. I hope you take these tips and put them into practice!

🎭 The Theatre bit

Here I am again talking about Valencian theatre. Last week I had a great time reading L’Increïble Assassinat d’Ausias March (The Incredible Murder of Ausias March) written by the playwrights Anna Mari and Daniel Tormo. I’m not biased by the fact that they are friends when I say that I haven’t been as immersed in a play in a long time.

For context, Ausias March as a Valencian poet from the XV century. All Valencian teenagers (me included) have been exposed to his work during high school. Marí and Tormo created a fantastic piece to make the work of Ausias March more compelling to that audience.

Including music and a mistery setting filled with humour, the play hooks you immediately in the story of a singer that makes her own interpretation of March’s work, but not everybody is happy with it…

It’s better if I don’t disclose anything else about the play. Here’s a trailer of the stage production.

📆 What is coming up

• 🇬🇧 21st of February - Shuffle at the Hoopla! Pre-Party (London, UK). Shuffle is back at Hoopla! Impro with one act part of the pre-party. Come and have fun.

• 🇬🇧 8th of March - London Playback Presents: Come as you Are (London, UK). The Rosemary Branch Theatre welcomes back London Playback to reenact your stories. Here you can get your tickets.

• 🇩🇪 14th-15th of March - Playback Theatre Level 2 Intensive (Berlin, Germany). I’m going the capital of Germany to offering a two days intensive. Looking forward to it. If you are around check it out.

• 🇩🇪 21th-22nd of March - Playback Theatre Level 2 Intensive (Hamburg, Germany). And also, I’ll wave the Winter goodbye while offering the same intensive in Hamburg.

• 🇬🇧 3rd to 6th of April - Playback Theatre Core Training Intensive (London, UK). I´ll be co-running, with London Playback, a core training intensive during the easter weekend. A perfect oportunity to learn Playback Theatre from ground level. Get on the waiting list.

📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert

Last week, the Spanish independent Vermila Studios, released the game Crisol: Theatre of Idols, heavily infused with the imagery of Spanish folklore. I’m enjoying it. The game is clearly influenced by titles like Bioshock and the first-person Resident Evil games. Visually, it is stunning, as if the Spanish Semana Santa had vomited over Bloodborne.

The mechanics of the game are also clever. It is a first person shooter, but the twist that the bullets are made of your own blood. Every shot has its cost, so there is a strategy factor that makes you think before any encounter with enemies.

Without having finished it yet, I’d say the story-wise it is average—decent enough. The only negative thing I can say about it is regarding the performance of the PlayStation 5 release, which is locked at 30 frames per second, making the gameplay feel sluggish and heavy. Hopefully future patches will improve things. I plan to get it on Steam sometime in the future though.

Still, the game is pretty much worth playing.

🐱 Dessert to the dessert

And this Friday is Jon’s 13th Birthday! That’s right, the other lovely creature that live with us is also a year older. He’s acts brave and likes to hunt our fingers, but at the end of the day he enjoys cuddling with us, specially by night. Happy birthday gorgeous! I love you 3000 and more.