Greetings, dear readers. How have you been? Me, busy and ill. I’m riding a cold that will probably stick with me until the spring blossoms. Had a few good things going on though.

If you are, like me, a Playback Theatre practitioner, it’s very likely that you’ve heard the phrase “Aaaah, the magic of Playback Theatre”. For the confused improvisers in the back row, this is something that is said when something happens during the reenactment of a story that reflects a fact or truth about it not disclosed by the teller during the interview.

Let me tell you about an example. During a playback performance back in Spain, I was playing the teller’s actor for a girl that mentioned a teddy bear very dear to her. Mind that in Spanish we don’t use that term to refer to stuffed bears. During the reenactment of the story I, unoriginally, chose to call that stuffed bear… yes, Teddy. The girl widened her eyes in surprise and, when the reenactment ended, she asked “How did you know that my bear’s name was Teddy??” “Aaaah, the magic of Playback Theatre”, answered the conductor while doing jazz hands.

This example is quite silly but simple enough to make the point. The girl didn’t mention her bear’s name was Teddy. I made an assumption based on general experience, and it paid off, but it isn’t always like that. Assumptions can lead to tainting the teller’s experience. I was inexperienced back then, and today I try to keep assumptions away because it’s more likely that I mess up rather than score a goal if I lack certainty. It is something that I pass on whenever I train new playbackers.

However, this “magic” keeps happening.

We know that the teller didn’t say a particular thing but sometimes we say what most likely was being said in a specific situation, and the teller goes “I did say that!”. Jazz hands.

The teller mentions she’s studying Japanese. I’m chosen to be the teller’s actor, I happen to know Japanese, hence I speak Japanese during the reenactment. The teller’s jaw drops to the floor. Jazz hands.

There is no magic. It’s coincidence and shared knowledge, sometimes it is collective and sometimes it is subjective. Knowledge and experience is what makes us more prone to recreate these magic moments.

What we should do is keep putting hares, doves and all kinds of things inside our magician's top hat.

Of course this can extend to improv. I always love watching improv shows where a simple suggestion can inspires scenes filled with knowledge and specifics about the topic thrown from the audience. But of course you don’t need a suggestion to bring your truth and life experiences on stage. There are very few things more compelling than watching someone speak with pasion about something.

Keep geeking out guys!

📆 What is coming up

• 12th of December - Acaprov (London, UK). Join us in Shoreditch for our December special show, where we will improvise a musical to dive into the holiday spirit! Get your tickets.

• 18th of December - Acaprov (London, UK). We’ll be running an improvised a cappella Hallmark Christmas musical at the Hart hotel in Shoreditch. It’ll be fun! Wanna come?

• 19th of December - Shuffle (London, UK). Invited by our friends of The Pilot, the Shuffle gang will be performing on their Christmas special night. Fun guaranteed! Make sure you don’t miss it.

📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert

I’m mourning. Last week I had to say goodbye to my main gaming PC. One day it turned off, never to turn on again. I tried to resuscitate it by all means possible. I lost many hours watching videos on YouTube addressing possible solutions. I tried plugging and unplugging components in several combinations, including the internal CMOS battery. I had no luck. It is a small setback, because it was the machine I used to play more demanding PC games on Steam, using an external GPU.

It’s not a big loss, as it was a cheap mini-PC that I bought specifically to use the eGPU via the Oculink port. Now, I can see this as the perfect excuse to wait for the release of the Steam Machine during early 2026 and selling that eGPU. Meanwhile I plugged again my Steam Deck to the TV to keep brushing up on my backlog. I might also use cloud gaming via GeForce NOW for the most demanding games. Anyway, first world problem that, curiosly enough, happened the week I watched all the movies in the TRON franchise.

Imagine the “magic” I can pull out if someone shares a similar story during a Playback Theatre session.