Gael's Erratic Pigeon Post | Summer's Trail
A newsletter about dogs, boats, religion and sometimes improv.
A newsletter about dogs, boats, religion and sometimes improv.
Hello everybody!
If you are new, welcome. If you aren’t new, re-welcome. This is the Erratic Pigeon Post, back for another round, in which I try to re-organise a bit the way I write this newsletter, and share my burning passion for all things at once!
THE IMPROV CHATTER
During the summer, we usually do not teach classes with Laura. This allows us to take a bit of holidays—whaaaat?!—but also allows us to travel to festivals and different artistic events. Here is a bit of a tour of our string of summer festivals!
Robin Hood International Improv Festival
Starting with the end: last week I was invited for the second year in a row at the Robin Hood festival in Nottingham. And like the year before, it was a lot of fun!
The Robin Hood festival is very much a community festival: putting on stage a lot of local improvisers and groups, bringing people together in a sense of cheerfulness and joy around the practice of improv.
This year, in addition to teaching a very nice group of improvisers for two full days, I also had the chance to premiere our new show with Tanine Dunais and Chris Mead: An Imam, a Priest and an Atheist walk into a bar.
Our show covers the topic of religion, seen through the lens of our personal history being raised respectively Christian, Muslim and atheist. Going in and out of scenes to share these personal stories about our upbringing, it combines fun and light with things we sometimes never shared with anyone before.
But my favorite bit of the show, I think, is that we spend the last 15mn of it opening up the floor to the audience, if they would like to share some of their stories. We got some of the most vulnerable, open and heartwarming stories from people in the crowd, to a point where it felt like we couldn’t hope for a better way to open up a conversation about such a sensitive topic!
Improfestival Karlsruhe
This one is a classic of my summers, as I am also the co-artistic director of the festival, alongside the fabulous Manuel Speck.
This festival has become one of a kind for its impressive consistent quality of theatrical shows. This year, the 18 shows were top notch, with some fabulous guest groups, some really great ensemble shows, and some existing shows performed by ensemble members.
Some of my favorite bits in pictures:
Of course, I’m biased, but if you ever have the opportunity to visit this festival, it is every time a breath of fresh air that launches me creatively into the season!
Improfest Sweden
The perfect festival post-holiday to warm back up! We were invited there with Laura to teach and to perform our favorite show Object of Affection. It was great to get the show back on the road, and we got lucky enough to perform it with the fabulous Phil Lunn on keys!
We also got invited to perform a small show with our friends from GBG Impro, and got put together with Anton. A very fun little show in which we played a double-date between Laura & Anton, and me and my partner-that-never-shows-up.
SOME LIFE STUFF
We had quite a few other projects that will hopefully develop in other Pigeon Posts in the future. Obviously quite a lot of it is improv-adjacent.
The Flock Festival
Technically this should be in the string of festivals, but we didn’t travel there because we organised it at home!
It was a real pleasure to direct this first edition: so many people trusted us and join sunny-Amsterdam for a week, watching and playing shows, taking and teaching workshops, drinking and serving wine. A true highlight of my summer, with some bold choices of shows, staging, set, tech, programming, premiering a new creation, and all of that with a very small team!
Christianna, Tanine and Laura did an absolute blast of a job producing such a big event with me—and sometimes without me—and the team of people helping us was dedicated to the bone. We are very lucky people!
Taking time for our inner artist
Laura went on a week of sculpture at the summer camp for adults Buitenkunst in the Netherlands, I spent a week in Poland with fellow-improvisers from the SIN, the European network I am part of, to exchange and practice our craft, and I also spent about 3 weeks in the High-Arctic with 40 other human beings on a tall ship, sailing around Svalbard on an artistic residency. But this will definitely make another Pigeon Post.
A BIG OL’ SHOUT OUT
This is a bit of a new section of the Pigeon Post, where I’ll try every time to shout out to someone that I admire, to a cool project, to something that is making change around.
New Stories for Old Dogs
During the residency in the Arctic, I met really great people and artists, and one of them is Anna Moore. She created a project to fundraise a bit of money for different humane organisations.
The idea? She collect authentic old photographs of dogs in flea markets and antique shops, and make a selection of 10 pictures that will inspire 10 shorts stories written by 10 different writers to give them a new life. Super-duper cool, right?
All profit from the sales of the little zine will go to Rez Road Rescue, a humane association acting in Navajo Nation.
You wanna support this cool project and read 10 nice stories, for only $10? Reach out directly to Anna on her instagram, or if you prefer buy the zine via Etsy—with a tiny additional fee. And because we live in an era of digital products: yes, it is a physical magazine, that you will receive by snail-mail!
RANDOM THOUGHT
This time my random thought is a bit meta and linked to this newsletter. There are screaming proofs that I’ve not been able to send a Pigeon Post as often as I wished when I started. This also coïncides with my growing waste of time spent on socials, doom-scrolling to death in the middle of the night.
When I was in the Arctic (did I ever mention to you that I was in the Arctic? 😃) we were completely off-grid for 15 days. No internet, no phone service, no nothing else than being there. And as weird as it felt, it also felt good. Easy. And like I wished my life could allow me more of that. The terrible side-effect of it was the dread of turning back on my phone. But there is probably something to take away from this.
Inspired by the fantastic Chris Mead, I am contemplating for a while quitting socials and focusing more on this newsletter. But it’s scary: Facebook and Instagram are such an inherent part of my job, for promotion, general advertisement of my work, and communication to be reachable to hire. What if suddenly the world forgets about me? Scary stuff.
All of that to say that I’ll try to get more regular in sending the Erratic Pigeon Post—yep, I hear you, it’s not that hard given the current frequency. For now I’ll try to stick to four sections: about improv, about my life, about someone else, and about something random (aka. food). But this is where you can help me: what would you like to read me ramble about?
Anything you would like to share? Do you have something you’re craving to read about? You are curious about nerdy shit and don't know what to do with it? You can always hit reply and talk to me!
Have an great week wherever you are!
Gael
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.