Greetings, dear readers. I hope you are doing well. The UK is currently experiencing a flu crisis, and because of my FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out), I am still dealing with a runny nose and feeling a bit under the weather, having had a couple of rough days last week. Physically and emotionally.

Here we are, though. We made it to the antepenultimate issue of 2025, which is going to be brief due to all of you getting ready to enjoy your holidays, whether you celebrate Christmas or not. Heads up, the last two newsletters of the year will be more personal and informal.

The title of this week’s newsletter refers to a sensation I’ve been having all of my life, and I wonder if you feel the same. I don’t want to fall into assumptions, but I think you might. I’m talking about a constant devaluation of what we know, especially as performers.

Life is a long journey, filled with experience and knowledge that we try to fit in a quite limited vessel. When tackling a specific topic, sometimes it’s hard to tell when we have enough knowledge about it. When talking about improv, Playback Theatre, clowning, acting... has anybody reached the point where they can say, “That’s it! I’ve reached completion! I have all the stickers of the album!”? I am genuinely launching this question to you.

If your answer is, “Hell yeah, I have!”, well, I don’t believe you... but let’s say that I do, and you have a proud collection of knowledge. Take a look at the first page of the album. I bet the stickers are faded, considerably devaluing your whole collection of knowledge. We cannot keep every single aspect of our craft in mint condition. It’s natural and human to take things for granted, to think that this knowledge, especially the basic one, will be there waiting for us, bright and shiny, whenever we need it.

As a good geek, you have to take care of your collection. There are several ways to keep it in mint condition. Go to performances, attend workshops, check your old notes re-read books (the ones you bought several years ago when you started), subscribe to newsletters. You can even write one! Ha!

Not everything we learn in this life is like riding a bike or swimming.

🎭 The Theatre bit

I had time to read some theatre, yay, and my choice was a play from fellow Valencian Rodolf Sirera: Clandestins, Una història de desamor (Clandestine, a story of failed love). The play brings the audience to Brazil in the year 1968, where the military dictatorship was on its most repressive stage.

The character pivoting around the play is Gabriela, a teacher under investigation for being the wife of a missing revolutionary leader. With her husband missing, the only person she can rely on is Camila, a nun with whom she established a deep connection that escalates to intimacy.

Like any dictatorship, the play is very pessimistic, with no room for hope. But it’s the way the characters navigate through these dark times that makes their relationships interesting and compelling to the reader/audience.

The play, published in 2023, got many deserved accolades. This time, I can tell why and I agreeably understand its success.

📆 What is coming up

• 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.

• 9th of January - Acaprov (London, UK). The first improvised a cappella of 2026! New begginings, new things to do… Come and take a look.

• 31st of January (2026) - Playback Theatre taster workshops (London, UK). We will be running a couple of Playback Theatre taster workshops throughout the last Saturday of January, running two different groups, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Book morning workshop. Book afternoon workshop.

📚 🎮 🎥 📺 The geeky dessert

The last few nights I slept pretty well, I don’t know if it’s related or not, but I chose to use the Skyrim soundtrack, composed by Jeremy Soule, to dive into my dreams, played in one of those many hours long videos you can find on YouTube to soothe you for sleep. The dreams weren’t Skyrim-related though.

I’ve always liked videogame soundtracks, I’m using them lately for sleeping, but I’ve listened to them a lot, especially on my studying days or whenever I had to deal with a considerable workload. My favourite composer is Nobuo Uematsu for his work on the Final Fantasy series; its hard to choose which entry has the better soundtrack. However one of my favourite soundtracks of all time is Assassin’s Creed II by Jesper Kyd. Kudos to The Last of Us soundtrack by Gustavo Santaolalla, and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild soundtrack by Manaka Kataoka and Yasuaki Iwata.

Game soundtracks hit harder and stay longer with you because they help with the immersion experience. Don’t miss out on this!

Do you have a favourite one?