Erratic Pigeon Post | Whoop, I survived the festival 🥳
Hey friend!
This week was intense, and the reason for that was that I was organising the 26th edition of the IMPRO Amsterdam festival! Let me tell you a bit more about it, and about how it was for me.
What is IMPRO Amsterdam?
The historical improv festival of Amsterdam exists since 1995, and has been held almost every year. This year, we had the 26th edition, very different from precedent editions for many reasons.
So how was the festival?
Awesome!
Seriously, it rocked, and I am very proud of what we succeeded to organise in a short period of time. For this mini-festival, we still had a serious size.
On the performance side, we had 4 nights of shows with a total of 7 different formats involving 2 hosts, 2 tech improvisers, 3 directors, 5 musicians, and 42 performers!
For the workshops program, we had a line-up of 12 teachers for a total of 15 different classes. I even succeeded to take some workshops, and I simply loved it!
Check out the fantastic pictures of the festival on the socials of IMPRO Amsterdam if you wanna feel the FOMO. 😃
How was the 2022 edition?
The last few years have been tough, so this year was focused on healing and getting back on our feet.
In January 2021, we had to cancel the festival because of the second big wave of Covid. For the 2022 edition, we heard that our previous theatre Companietheater was closing definitely, so we had to find a new home, that we found in a room called the Rode Hoed. When we had to postpone the festival to April 2022, we also knew that the Rode Hoed wouldn't be available, and we looked for a third place that could host the festival as it was. When I got named Artistic Director in February, my first action has been to cancel the festival all together, as it didn't look promising.
How was this year different?
After that, the team needed to first mourn the work and energy lost in the process. They joined me mid-March on the organisation of a 'mini-festival'. The idea? Having a bridge between the old festival and the new one coming next year. For that, we invited people from all over the Dutch-speaking improv world! Teachers and performers are all currently living in the Netherlands or Flanders, and we reached out to communities in the entire country. Everything still happened in English to welcome anyone that wanted to spend a few days in Amsterdam.
Another pretty big difference is the new theatre, 't Zonnehuis, and more generally the venues.
't Zonnehuis, the new home of IMPRO Amsterdam
We are now operating from the neighbourhood of Amsterdam Noord, which is lovely, beautiful and less touristic than the hyper-center. The theatre was a first collaboration, but it will very likely be our choice for next year too!
What to expect for next year?
The first step now is to re-organise the team, the priorities, the way we work, etc. I want to bring change to the structure of the festival—in terms of organisation, decision process, communication—and we also have to bring some change to the planning, as we are in a new place. 2023 will be a different festival with the flavours that we liked in the old ones.
We will be back to an international edition, over a full week again, with some crazy parties, inspiring workshops and terrific shows. With people from here and there, known faces and new faces. And we want to make IMPRO Amsterdam a place where anyone can feel good, welcomed and loved.
What was my job?
Good question that deserves a long answer. I promised to keep the EPP short enough, so I will do another letter on how it is to organise a festival. How it is for me, as I don't believe that there is only one way to do it.
What I can already tell you is that it's fantastic, tiring, fascinating, frustrating, exciting and definitely worth it.
Ok, but what about food?
Besides the amazing food that our new vegetarian caterer made for the festival, I didn't have the time to cook a lot. So I'm just gonna share the best picture of me—by Mathieu van den Berk.
#footisnofood
See you around for another Erratic Pigeon Post!
Gael
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