Gael's Erratic Pigeon Post | There will be Light!
A newsletter about cables, silly geese, celeriac and sometimes improv.
A newsletter about cables, silly geese, celeriac and sometimes improv.
Hello everybody!
Look at me sending an actual other Pigeon Post within the same month. Aren’t you proud?
Thanks a lot to the people that answered my latest Pigeon Post with stuff you wanted me to nerd about, it all went on a list that I’ll use as inspiration for future newsletters! Now, let’s get started with today.
THE IMPROV CHATTER
Being a professional improviser means something different for all of us. But what is sure is that for most of us it means more than just the moments we jump on stage in front of an audience, or the ones in the rehearsal room when we work on a show.
This Summer during a meeting with the SIN—an international group of European improvisers I’m part of—we asked ourselves to list all of the jobs we have.
On my list I came down to 12 jobs, including 4 of them that I think I do better than average, and 3 of them where I’m clearly under-qualified but I still have to do it.
Isn’t that completely nuts to imagine that I often feel guilty for not being on top of my game in one of these twelve jobs?! That I should know more, better, and now? I’m sure I’m not the only person in this case, but sometimes it feels good to acknowledge it.
Light designer, technician and operator
One of these jobs that I truly love now and grew into feeling pretty confident about is light-person. I say light-person because I feel like the way I do it encompasses what’s expected from a light designer—imagining what goes where—, a light technician—plugging and laying cables—and a light operator—being behind the light desk during the show and improvising which buttons to push.
The drawing-bits
This is something that I love and find fascinating. When I direct, I create the vision for a show, and how this translates to the stage. For a few years now, I also proceed more visually, including light design.
The whole idea of directing Transperceneige actually started with a set and light design vision. At times, it can be difficult to imagine what could be possible. For the Flock Festival, because I was away during the first two days, I designed the light plot for the 21 shows—knowing that we had limited means, an ambitious variety of shows, changes of staging every day, and sometimes between two shows on the same day!
Was it absolutely hectic and stressful? Definitely. Did I learn a lot doing it? Definitely as well.
The cable-bits
When we started producing shows at NDSM Theater in 2021, we got access to a big empty cube, with lights hanging, and no house-technician. 3 days before our very first show there, I heard that they didn’t even have a light desk. Within those 3 days, I learnt as much as possible about light desks, research options online, chose and bought one, got it, learnt to program it and use it, plugged it at the theatre, had to troubleshoot why it wasn’t working, made it work and eventually operated lights during one of the shows and played the second one!
Was it absolutely hectic and stressful? Definitely. Did I learn a lot doing it? Definitely as well.
And then we moved to Treehouse. The room we use for our main productions is similar to NDSM Theater. Minus the lamps. So the first time we played there, we had to figure out literally everything! Amperage, DMX cables, dimmer racks and more, I had to learn about everything. I bought a lot of second hand material, and it comes with its challenge: the first dimmer rack I bought was wired wildly, so I had to open it, look at the wiring, try to understand it, de-wire, re-wire, plug it on a 32A power source and hope that I wouldn’t die.
Was it absolutely hectic and stressful? Definitely. Did I learn a lot doing it? Definitely as well1.
The button-bits
This is something that I’ve actually started doing almost since I started improv. Being a light improviser is such a joy as well as a big responsibility, that I find it most exciting! Even if sometimes it is hectic and stressful and I learn a lot.
What’s next?
I’ve learnt so much about all this in the last few years, but I still feel like I want to know more. That is probably the reason why I keep challenging myself to try new things!
In the next production of Flock Theatre, Polar Nights, I decided to work on sound design, in addition to the rest. The plan? Three players at all time in a geodesic structure, stuck in the Polar night, with 360° sound design picking up on their voices mixed with actual recordings of the Arctic expedition I was on in June!
This all made me offer a new workshop about understanding and operating lights for improv. There is also this idea hanging somewhere in my head to offer myself to festival as their light-person—including design, tech and operation. We even talked about it with brilliant set-design thinker Tanine Dunais, to have a package deal for the two of us working together!
ANYWAYS!
I could nerd about tech for the whole day. If you want to nerd more, anytime, tell me. Also, celebrate your light-people. Elevate your productions. And most of all: be kind with yourself if you don’t understand it all—yet!
SOME LIFE STUFF
Last week I went back to Leipzig for the Momenta festival, organised by my dear friend Raschid Daniel Sidgi—he is truly amazing and keeps surprising me with new talents.
I was lucky enough to be invited there again—five years after the first time—to perform Just Play with the two other Frenchies that I love more than anything, Cédric and Dan aka. Anananas & Pampamplemousse. We got the luck to play with two beautiful locals: Claudius on keys who put us marvellously in music, and Frank on lights, who is an absolute pro in addition to being an amazing human.
I’m usually not one for improv in video, but somehow Just Play tends to be pretty watchable, and I think this show was one of my favorite of 2024. It was silly, ridiculous, connected and I had a great time re-watching bits of it—which, if you know me, never happens!
So if you have 50 minutes to kill, or if your rainy day feels bleak, or if you just want to see us run around, I thought I’d share it here2.
A BIG OL’ SHOUT OUT
This week, I’m going to see the play that the fabulous Katy Schutte wrote as the outcome of her own Arctic Circle residency a couple of years back!
If you’re keen on seeing something that looks really cool, is based on her own adventure with a twist of cosmic horror, it’s playing at the Omnibus Theatre in London until the 12th of October!
RANDOM THOUGHT
Back on my obsession with food, recently I got in my vegetable package two celeriac. Ugh.
To fight off the feeling that winter was coming way too fast, I cooked it in a new fashion: roasted wrapped in aluminium foil for about 90min, hand-shredded into chicken-wing-sized bits, buttermilked, breaded with spices, shallow-fried with garlic and thyme, and finally coated with a home-made sesame teriyaki glaze.
Thanks for reading me! I hope you like this new format, and if you want to ask something, if you have thoughts or if just wanna share your general excitement, you’re always welcome to hit reply.
Take care, be kind and eat your vegetable!
Gael
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If I’m being honest, now I’m at the stage where I roam second-hand online shops to buy cables, lamps and bulbs at night. If you don’t believe me, ask Laura. ↩
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If you liked it, feel free to share the love by telling me. If you hated it, just keep it for yourself, I’m ok. If you really want to see it live, invite us to your city! ↩
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