XXVIII - Professionalism makes a difference
Exploring the balance of passion, professionalism and dedication in improv and playback theatre!
Greetings, dear readers. Starting this week I’m going to stop fragmenting the newsletter as much as I’ve been doing. Unless I want to specify one aspect of either improv or playback, I’ll use a main discourse relatable to both.
Here we are one week again, after a busy one for me due lots of storytelling, which always fills me with joy. It might sound cheesy, but I feel privileged for getting paid to do things that makes me happy (at least most of the time), and makes people happy. Do I do it at the level that I would like to? Not exactly, due the uncertainty of the freelance life, always navigating in the search of bookings, but I’m still steering the ship.
Professionalism is a peculiar word, normally attached to livelihood job and dedication. But, does it always go together?
People can definitely earn money by doing something but not being entirely dedicated to it. I know many improvisers and playback theatre practitioners that have a 9 to 5 job just to earn money to keep doing what they love. Others find a way to make it relevant and applying it to their jobs, to bring some joy to it.
Making a living exclusively out of improv or Playback Theatre is not easy and I don’t know many people able to do it. It’s more frequent in improv. If you run a succesful theatre and/or teach regularly, there are good chances you will make it.
Earning a living wage just doing Playback Theatre is more challenging, I only know a few ones able to do it, besides the creators of playback, of course.
I can’t remember who told me, years ago, that being professional it’s not about what you get from what you do, but what you put into what you do. That is dedication. Put in other words, taking it seriously.
Last week I had the chance to improvise a play with fellow professional actors, it was the culmination of a six weeks long course put together by fellow actor and improviser Jennifer Jordan.
It is very satisfying to play with someone that, not only will “yes and” you, but they will go all the way with you. If you go deep and get into emotional work, they will follow you resulting in compelling scene. This scratched an itch that I find usually in improv, where the vast majority aren’t dedicated performers.
I’m not generalising, though. During the years I’ve stumbled upon professional actors that are not good improvisers, that they cannot differentiate improv as a comedic device from unscripted acting, and they try to go silly at every opportunity, frustrating any attempt of making any kind of grounded work.
Talking about frustration, Playback Theatre is not exempt from it. Maybe it’s because I default to it, but when I see a playback performance I expect to see a certain level of professionalism. My standards are not too high, I’d like to see a clear and well framed ritual and the achievement of honouring the stories from the audience.
Not many, but I’ve seen performances too clunky to meet those standards. Luckily most of the performances I’ve seen are good or very good performances, however I only can name a very few Playback Theatre companies that oozes professionalism.
Having performers that jump into a performance without proper training and/or rehearsal time. Not making the session about the audience and the tellers within. Not having a clear sense of the ritual of playback to hold the space. Those are some of the mistakes that some might make, taking professionalism away and resulting on a poor experience for those involved.
Of course, some companies use playback to showcase their goals in practical fields like education and mental health, prioritizing function over the aesthetic aims of the performing arts. I fully respect that, because, by using playback, they are being professional in their respective fields.
In conclusion, besides strenghtening your respective art forms, if you want to show dedication and professionalism…
Improvisers, keep working on your acting.
Actors, keep working on your improv.
Playback actors, keep working your improv and acting.
📆 What is coming up
14th of November - Acaprov (London, UK). Another month, another a cappella musical. Get your tickets.
7th - 10th of November - Belfast Improv Festival (Belfast, UK). I’m going back to Belfast for the improv festival, and I’m looking forward to perform in the ensemble directed by Nick Armstrong. Get your tickets.
12th - 15th of November - Improv Fest Ireland (Dublin, Ireland). I’m also coming back to my favourite improv festival in the whole world. I’m going to be performing with fellow Improv Utopia Campers and local improvisers. Get your tickets.
📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert
We’ve reach a point where subscription services to consume our media are normalised. Music, movies, tv-shows, games, books, apps… everything is behind a paywall. Lately, at home, we’ve been discussing canceling subscriptions to as many platforms as possible. So it’ll be goodbye to NOW, Shudder, Crunchyroll, Disney… and lets see where we stop. A little geeky project I’ve been working on last week is setting up our own media streaming platform.
We got a NAS (Network Attached Storage), plugged in a 4TB hard drive, with the possibility of adding more storage in the future, and installed Jellyfin, which is a free and open-source media server software that can turn a plethora of devices into your domestic streaming platform.
Now we have a box living in the cabinet with our router, which we can access remotely to feed it any media we want to add. I’ve been building and curating my own collections (a lot of horror, of course) and actually it incentivizes you to watch more, keeping you away from the overwhelming browsing of content in different platforms.
What’s that? Where do I take the content from? Quoting Jeff Goldblum in Jurassic Park, “Life, uh, finds a way”.
✨ That’s all folks ✨
Thanks for reading Playing Back an Improvised Life, a newsletter by Ferran Luengo.
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Ferran Luengo