London, 22nd of September 2026

👋 Greetings, dear readers.

I’ve just came back from Malta, where I was able to enjoy an encore of the summer weather, although I came back home a bit under it, probably due the overexposure to air conditioning. Contrasts are not always good.

I had, overall, a good time there enjoying, not only the beautiful island, but Improvizza, an improv festival as cozy and intimate as the land that hosts it. The highlights of the festival for me, of course, were being able to introduce Playback Theatre to a handful of improvisers and perform with Acaprov.

Condensing the essence of Playback Theatre into three hours is complicated, it feels more like a taster, but I managed to tackle a few significant forms. Luckily, the participants were very engaged and seemed to understand and appreciate the nuances of executing them. They focused not only on the essence of the sharing from the teller, but also explored metaphor and even song. I was quite happy at the end of it.

Outside the activities I was involved in, I attended a couple of workshops that I really liked. Ahmed Achrafi offered a workshop focused not just on overcoming the fear of failure, but on actually embracing it. He used a lot of clown-flavoured exercises, so I had a great time allowing myself to be silly.

Fun fact about Ahmed: he also has Playback Theatre training! He dove into it in Egypt with Ben Rivers. It turns out I have a playbacker radar I didn't even know I had…

Heyfa Limam’s workshop on challenging gender stereotypes in improv was the other one I attended, and it was really good. Through grounded, naturalistic scenes, we challenged our perceptions, so heavily biased by societal constructs around gender expectations, by trying to avoid assumptions.

Even I had a couple of moments where I had to brain-palm at myself for attaching a role to a stereotype. To give an example: we were supposed to play gender-neutral characters in the scenes. While watching one where a female improviser was endowed as a chef, my brain immediately went to picturing the character as male. The same might happen when you picture the president of a country, or a CEO. Of course it might not be true for everybody. Heyfa’s intentions though weren’t to make us feel bad about this thoughts but to clock when it happens, raising our awareness by fighting the program that the patriarchy has coded into our brains. An important work that everyone should do, I truly recommend working with Heyfa if you have the chance.

Besides the workshops, of course I also attended the shows. My personal favourites as a spectator were At Home, by Owen Scrivens and Jodyanne Fletcher, and From Dusk to Dawn, by Joe and Kathy Rinaldi. The simple reason is that both pairs offered unscripted, grounded, and naturalistic theatre. The type of improv that I like.

🫶 Stay hydrated, love to you all.

🎙️ The podcast bit

The second episode of Playing Back an Improvised Life is out! I’m so happy to finally have out in the world my conversation with improviser, educator and mental health advocate Bex Queren. Her discovery of Playback Theatre, coming from being a full-fledged improviser, is really insightful. It’s a great testimony from someone who now has a foot in both art forms.

Join us in this conversation as we chat back and forth about Playback Theatre, improv, and mental health. Also, did you know you can improvise a cocktail? Tune in to find out more!

It’s searchable on your favourite streaming platform, but you can also find links to all of them on the Playing Back an Improvised Life hub site.

📆 What is coming up

• 🇬🇧 27th of September - True Heart Theatre open rehearsal (London, UK). We are going to be hosting another open rehearsal at the end of the third quarter. Bring your curiosity and experience Playback Theatre in a safe space. Free registration here.

• 🇮🇪 2nd of October - C*NTS (Dublin, Ireland). Premiere of the artistic unscripted theatrical piece that my friend Rosalind Grégoire and I will be bringing to Improvfest Ireland. It’ll be… interesting. Come and found out.

• 🇬🇧 9th of October - Acaprov at Shoreditch Balls (London, UK). It’ll be spooky season! Will our show be? Come and check out. Get your tickets. 🎵

• 🇬🇧 20, 21, 22, 28 and 29th of November - Playback Theatre Core Training (London, UK). Are you finally considering getting into Playback Theatre? Join True Heart Theatre’s Level 1 core training to learn the basics of Playback and put them to the test with a showcase! Info and registration here.

📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert

This week, for the geeky dessert (no pun intended), I’ve been catching up on The Bear. I sprinted through the third season a few weeks ago and, thanks to spending a considerable amount of time on an airplane last week, I watched a handful of episodes from the fourth season, getting closer to its fifth and final season.

Since its premiere in 2022, the series, created by Christopher Storer, has been reaping accolades non-stop, stocking up on plenty of Emmy Awards and Golden Globes in the pantry (no pun intended). It’s a great series that balances its plots very well, with plenty of episodes that could serve (no pun intended) perfectly as independent medium-length films very easy to digest (no pun intended).

In case you still haven’t found the time to watch it, make room for it. I’m pretty sure I’m not the first person to recommend it to you.