Gael's Erratic Pigeon Post | Imagine, make, feel, and start again.
A newsletter about eggs, comics, spannende dingetjes and sometimes improv.
A newsletter about eggs, comics, spannende dingetjes and sometimes improv.
Hello there! I'm excited to be back in this space and to premiere talking about a new project in the life stuff!
This season has been quite a challenge so far, but also full of adventures, projects, questions and excitement. If you are a maker out there and you sometimes feel lonely, know that it's not the case! Today's Pigeon Post will talk about changing things around, and the everlasting adapting to what fits better in our lives.
As usual, feel encouraged to answer to this Pigeon Post with anything you want, and if you liked it, feel free to share it with your friends!
THE IMPROV CHATTER
Flock Theatre is changing. Shedding its old skin. Revamping. And believe me, that’s both exciting and scary! Spannend1 as the Dutch would say!
How was Flock working so far?
We created Flock in 2020 with Laura because we wished to put on stage and in the world the type of improv that makes us vibrate: theatrical, human, ambitious. During the Perryweerd Tour, we were very inspired by all of the companies and improvisers we met on our path, but one stuck out particularly as fitting what we wanted to do: Paper Street Theatre in Canada. It is a small company, they have three projects per season and they do Improv that feels like theatre.
Based on our experience in Victoria with them, and numerous conversations with Dave and Missie, we created the model of Flock Theatre: a school with classes taught by the two of us, and two to three show productions per year, running an open casting for each project depending on the needs of the show. Along the years, we developed multiple original productions, always more ambitious:
Skin Hunger (female-lead zombie movie)
Operations. Relations. Complications. (hospital drama)
Marvellous Stories (Marvel-inspired play)
I Will Survive (90s play on AIDS crisis)
The True North (scenes inspired by the true history of Amsterdam Noord)
Transperceneige (post-apocalyptic class-critique)
The Matrix (play on the place of human creativity)
Bloodline (medieval improv)
Polar Nights (1900s golden age of polar exploration)
Why changing this awesome thing?
Obviously, all of this is truly great, but as any maker knows, it is also only the tip of the work-iceberg. These projects are more and more ambitious and come with more and more satisfaction as well, we grew the organisation team to take Tanine on board two years ago, we have more and more amazing external teachers working for our school, we created an international festival, just ran an improvathon, have international guests almost every month, run a small theatre venue and still travel internationally to teach and perform abroad. As you can imagine from this—incomplete—list, all of this comes with a lot of work.
After five years, we reached a point where we need to embark more people on board to continue doing the thing we love—without simply burning ourselves out, as it started showing. We spent the last five years giving stage opportunities, teaching opportunities, and generally getting to know the community and having the community members getting to know us, and now we need to create our own artistic family: with a two-way commitment in ambition, depth and time.
This lead to the Flock Theatre revamp!
How is it gonna look?
The revamp is an in-depth re-organisation of Flock Theatre, so it's a fun adventure to embark onto! The re-organisation touches the company at most levels:
The schedule: We pause our main productions for a year and instead launch a weekly Thursday show in our Studio Theatre. This will give us regularity and stage-time to the cast!
The ensemble: Talking about cast, we are opening applications for an ensemble of Actors, Musicians and Technicians to rehearse together and perform the shows. From now on, most of our performances will include our ensemble!
The Company: We tried to create a plan that involves on- and off-stage roles, what we call Company Members. This also includes Staff and Board positions, in addition to Laura and me!
The administration: We become a foundation, with a board, Laura and myself appointed as co-directors and the admin shenanigans that goes with it.
This is only a glimpse of the changes, but if you’re interested, curious, or even if you want to apply—before Monday, have a look here!
In any case, it is very exciting and very stressful to be re-thinking everything, and to refresh the application form hoping desperately that some people will be interested in the project (but what if no one is excited?). But it’s also what we do as makers: we imagine stuff, we make it happen, we feel how it feels, and we start all over again, imagine what the next step is.
SOME LIFE STUFF
Because big changes don’t come alone usually—also because they stem from a reason, my general overwhelm and walking the burnout tightrope lead me to make a pretty big decision. If everything works as planned and for the first time in 12 years, I will not be teaching weekly classes next season.
It feels like a really big huge decision, and on the spannend-scale from exciting to scary, it’s heavily on the scary side. It also is part of a broader reflection that I need to have, including less social media—and more Erratic Pigeon Post, more cooking again, more reading and getting inspired by stories, etc. Why? Simply to try that thing people talk about: slowing down. Weird.
But because I wouldn’t be me without a big project to offset the discomfort of letting go of something else, I decided to create the thing that I’ve been wanting to do for years: a year-long Masterclass!
The plan is to have 9 full weekends spread from September to June, with the same small group of ambitious improvisers, to work, dig and develop the improv I love. 90h of theatrical improv, shows, yummy lunches and general good times in Amsterdam Noord, that sounds like something I’m excited about!
If it sounds like something you would be excited about, feel free to have a look! I deliberately made a schedule that would fit both people based around Amsterdam, and people that would be willing to travel for the weekend to Amsterdam as well. Applications are open until May 18!
And if I succeed in not teaching weekly next year, I will try my best to start again writing essays and things for this newsletter. Who knows?
Again, this is a very exciting project, and the idea of putting it in the world and potentially having no one interested is terrifying. So even if you can’t / won’t make it to the masterclass, feel free to send me a nice word!
A BIG OL’ SHOUT OUT
It is not a surprise to anyone, but one of my favorite people to hang out with and to work with is Laura Doorneweerd-Perry. She is an amazing human, an amazing improviser, but also a workhorse of entrepreneurship.
She is my partner in crime in most of my projects in Amsterdam, and definitely a serious pillar of Flock Theatre. She is fun to work with, ambitious, smart and gets so much done just because. It’s truly impressive, but it’s also such a joy to get to collaborate with her!
The latest crazy thing we pulled off together with The Pretend Company and the amazing Chris Mead was organising a 14h-Improvathon in Amsterdam. It was nuts! And fun. And impressive. But only the beginning as well: the partnership with Pretend will continue next year for a 50h-Improvathon!
So if you can: get yourself a Laura. And if you can’t, I have good news: you can always work with the OG!
RANDOM THOUGHT
I really like graphic novels. During the pandemic, I created a 3-week online course called The power of Comics and Graphic Novels. It was using the storytelling devices from books into improv. And since then, I didn’t stop using these devices, but mostly I didn’t stop reading!
One of the things I love the most about speaking French is that I have access to the deep, immense and always innovative realm of francophone graphic novels2. From Blast to L’Arabe du Futur, there are some truly amazing stories out there. One of the latest book I read is a graphic adaption of the novel from Gaël Faye, Petit Pays. It is sad, it is beautiful and it’s amazingly written.
As a little anecdote and in case you are passing by Amsterdam, we have the oldest running comics book store in the world3, and the staff is an absolute delight: it’s called Lambiek and it’s in the center. If you can, pass by and support this small shop!
Thanks for reading me! I hope you still enjoy meandering into my thoughts, and if you want to chat, just hit the reply button, or if you prefer to silent-read, just do what makes you happy!
Take care, be kind and read good stories!
Gael
‘Spannend’, in Dutch, literally means a combination of exciting and scary! Amazing word, eh? ↩
I also love non-French graphic novels. Have you read Grass, by Keum Suk Gendry-Kim? It’s as sad and beautiful as Petit Pays. ↩
At least run by the same people. There is a comic book store in Seattle that opened a bit before but has since then changed owners. ↩
If you’re reading this on the web or you’ve been forwarded this email by a friend, you can subscribe here. You can also find me on Facebook or Instagram. My latest activity, my classes and workshops to come are here.