XXVII - I'm Ferran, nice to meet you
Unmasking my mental health journey, and diving into horror fest.
Greetings, dear readers. This week’s newsletter is a bit personal and sentimental. I was thinking wether to address it here or not, but since it’s part of embracing who I am, I decided to do it anyway.
In the last years, the awareness of mental health issues has become important, being easier than ever to access to information about neurodiversity and the way it works. It is acknowledged like a real issue and to talk about it is not a taboo anymore. Growing up in post-dictatorship Spain, kids weren’t neurodivergent. Kids were weird, attention seekers, hysterical, lazy… nothing that you couldn’t repair with a smack.
But this kid always felt like an outsider, disconnected from the way others behaved. Disconnected from conversations. Struggling to deal with millions of ideas inside the head and never finding the will, confidence or strength to act upon them.
When I started to get information about ADHD I felt quite related to it. After thinking about it for a long time, at the beginning of this year I decided to get an assessment. I getting into a long journey.
Looking at the NHS waiting list for neuro-divergence assessments made me hit the ground with my ass. Let’s say I’m lucky enough to have access to private assessment thanks to my partner’s job, so I chose that route. Even going that way, I needed a referral from my GP at the NHS, though. After a twenty-minutes long interview with my GP, she saw grounds to make a referral.
With my GP referral, I was able to get date for an initial assessment, that took a couple of months to arrive. When it did, it confirmed that I was eligible for a full assessment, which I got after… more months of waiting! At the end of the assessment I was asked to wait for three weeks for the result. Then it took a turn…
“I’m booking you an assessment for autism”, I was told. There were something about my traits that didn’t make the cut for the ADHD diagnosis but definitely there was a neuro-divergence with shared traits. I felt lost and confused during the months after, awaiting for answers.
Last week, finally, I had them. After three hours of assessment, and a parallel interview with my partner, I had a diagnosis. Turns out I am autistic, sprinkled by the overlapping with ADHD traits and RSD (Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria). The explanation given to me during the briefing of the results was very clear and thorough, the therapist was very kid and gentle and made me understand things that flew over my head my whole life, like physical gestures (stimming) that I do and he observed. As I was listening to him, I started to feel emotional… and relieved. The next day I felt calm.
I’m happy that I went for the pursue of answers. Definitely, RSD makes sense due my frequent episodes of self-deprecation. I still have to think about how this affects to the way I do improv and playback theatre, maybe I here’s something I could address in the future.
So, here I am, trying to get to know myself again and happy that I chased these answers. Knowing about RSD has clarified my struggles with self-deprecation. I still need to consider how all of this affects my practice of improv and playback theatre, and that will likely be a focus for the future.
Thank you for bearing with this story. Next week I’ll go back to the usual content.
Oh, and… hi, I’m Ferran, nice to meet you.
🎭 The Theatre bit
Last week I read Berenàveu a les Fosques (You ate in the dark) written by the late Catalan playwright Josep Maria Benet i Jornet in 1972, during the last years of the dictatorship. Despite the sociopolitical context -set in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil war- the play is a piece of costumbrism, showing the relationship between two couples, one with a teenage girl, during the 50s in Barcelona.
The dynamics between the characters is quite ordinary and the situations presented are not surprising, but I was in awe of how well written it is. The balance between the scenes and the use of monologues between acts, serving foreshadowing, is great.
After reading it, I found that relatively recently a film adaptation was made. I was able to get it from the Catalan TV3 website and put it in a folder on my Google Drive with a separate subtitles file in English. Suit yourself if you want to watch it. I haven’t watched it yet, but if it’s close to the quality of the play, I’d give it a go.
📆 What is coming up
15th of October. Actor’s showcase (London, UK). I’m getting together at Theatre Deli with a bunch of professional actors to showcase an improvised one act play. Get your tickets.
16th of October. Acaprov at Hoopla! (London, UK). Acaprov is back at Hoopla for another improvised musical. Don’t miss it.
19th of October. London Playback Theatre (London, UK). With ancestry as a theme, we will be back at the Rosemary Branch Theatre to honour your stories. Get your tickets.
14th of November - Acaprov (London, UK). Another month, another a cappella musical. Get your tickets.
📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert - Spooky Season 👻
Last week we went to the Sitges International Film Festival. A festival know for showcasing genre films, being the genre horror and weird stuff. When I lived in Spain, the attendance to this festival was a constant every year. Not so constant since we moved to England, being 2022 the last one we attended before this one.
Of course, the festival is an excuse to catch up with long-time friends.
This year we watched six films over three days. They were OK, you can check my Letterboxd profile for more info, but if I have to choose my favourite that was Gaua, a folk horror movie set in the Basque Country during the Spanish Inquisition’s witch hunt.
Every time I attend, the festival brings me home. It's a place where twenty years of memories are mashed together. Memories from the dozens of films I’ve seen there, some of them long vanished from my mind, others have never left. I’m fond of the town itself as well, especially when the streets become a parade of people I can see myself in, wearing geeky t-shirts and displaying geeky tattoos. You can even see zombies on the day of the yearly Zombie walk.
Maybe the love for horror movies had to do with my diagnosis.
✨ That’s all folks ✨
Thanks for reading Playing Back an Improvised Life, a newsletter by Ferran Luengo.
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Ferran Luengo