XV - Sharing the Discovery
Exploring summer routines, improv techniques, Playback Theatre tips and the wonders of Victorian London!
Greetings, dear readers. If you are not enjoying a holiday trip, summers can be quite boring and uneventful. Add heat to the mix and the will to do things keeps dimming to apathy. These days I’ve been doing more morning walks than usual. I grab a cold brew from a local coffee shop (support small business) and walk aimlessly, which always sets my thinking process going, including the contents of this newsletter.
How do you cope with this kind of days?
🧠 The Improv bit
In improv, we are used to spoonfeed the information to the audience, what is known as the platform. New improvisers are encouraged to establish the who, the what, and the where. That means naming the characters, and stablishing what’s going on a specific location.
For short form and funny purposes, I think it’s ok. We like for the audience to have the information right away so they don’t have to think much or wonder about what’s going on.
For long form though, my stance is that we have to invite the audience to share the journey of discovery with the performers. Great plays doesn’t stablish the platform right away. As the scene progresses, the actors might develop it on a joyful combination of invention and discovery.
The thing is, the audience like it when their brains are massaged. While figuring out things for themselves, they love it when the discovery confirms their thoughts without, condescendingly, holding their hands.
Great improv duo TJ & Dave, follow that line of work. Don’t say what your doing, just do it. Don’t say what your feeling, just feel it.
The joy is in the surprise.
🪑 The Playback Theatre (PT) tip
It’s summer break for the Playback Theatre activity in London, but somehow it is always orbiting around me. This moments of hiatus are perfect to work on future projects, have meetings with your community, or to catch up on Playback Theatre readings.
In my case, I’m reading some sort of articles related to Playback Theatre regarding social justice and community action. The best place to find this repository of articles is the International Playback Theatre Network (IPTN) Journal.
Access is restricted for members only but the amount of the fee is just a suggestion since it’s a non-profit. You can pay what you like to have access to decades of Playback Theatre articles!
🎭 The Theatre bit
The work of Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad certainly raise eyebrows. I was introduced to it during a playwright course I did 8 or 9 years ago and I was struck by his style.
Last weekend I decided to read again Littoral (Tideline) and it’s as raw and rich as I remember it. There’s so many things with this play. Sometimes is very disturbing, sometimes is beautiful. It reminded me of the style of Sarah Kane on many occasions. Mouawad tackles trauma and identity bold and creatively. Everything is meta, metaphoric, and metaphysical. He combines informal and poetical language, including discourse through actual poems in the last act. And it also includes very few stage directions, which opens to many interpretations of its work.
I like the kind of theatre that, filled with honesty, drifts away from conventions, and Mouawad knows how to do that.
📆 What is coming up
2nd of August - Turning Points: A Playback Theatre performance (London, UK). As part of True Heart Theatre improvers program, we’re running a performance for the new playbackers. Join us at The Calder Bookshop that day and, if you like, share your stories so they can be played back. Information and tickets here.
3rd of August - “Longform is My Jam” JAM (London, UK). On Sunday the 3rd of August I will be running Acaprov’s long form improv jam in Shoreditch. Come and try it out. Information and (very cheap) tickets here!
9th of August - Stories That Shaped Us: A Playback Theatre performance (London, UK). True Heart Theatre will be listening the stories of the Hong Kong community in London. It’s going to be bilingual in English and Cantonese and it’s open to whoever wishes to attend. Information and tickets here.
2nd Ukranian Playback Theatre Festival (Poznan, Poland). This festival looks great and I will also be teaching there. It will take place in Poznan, Poland. All the information is here.
📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert
Apart from my morning walks, I’ve been also wandering around digital Victorian London uncovering the secrets of Jack the Ripper and working with Charles Dickens, Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, Florence Nightingale, Charles Darwin, and others. Of course I’m talking about completing my replay of Assassin’s Creed Syndicate.
I’m kind of a fan of the Assassin’s Creed games, not just for the gameplay but for its distinctive exploration of different time periods. Syndicate puts us in the skin of two siblings, Evie and Jacob Frye, in a mission to stop the templars taking over the city. The first time I played Syndicate, nine years ago, I didn’t live in London, so doing it now, lands quite differently. It’s been nice to revisit it and explore now familiar places and getting to know more of the history of the city, by reading properly the information provided.
Sometimes, I can’t believe that I live in London.
✨ That’s all folks ✨
Thanks for reading Playing Back an Improvised Life, a newsletter by Ferran Luengo.
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Ferran Luengo