#66 Singsong ding dong
Issue #66 Singsong ding dong
14th June 2023
Hello, marvellous reader.
Chris Mead here, your intrepid globe trotting improv buddy, back from Carrara, Italy and the Pandora Improv Festival.
I honestly don't know what I just experienced. For one thing, this is where we stayed. And there were FIVE HUNDRED other improvisers on site, partying to 4am, dressing up as penguins and wielding water pistols filled with gin. Then there was the aerial ring show, exploding paint bombs, exquisite pasta dishes and one of the most cohesive and talented improv ensembles I've ever worked with.
Carrara is the marble capital of Italy, all the surrounding mountains look snow-capped but it's really just marble dust.
And now, this!
Rule of three
[Theatre] Operation Mincemeat
This is an absolutely astonishing piece of theatre. It's a musical comedy set in World War II and I've spent 20 minutes sitting here trying to find the words to do it justice. I've failed, so here's a quote from Director Robert Hastie who helped bring the show to the West End.
"I love the company's storytelling - the quality of the writing is exceptional. I love how bold it is. It just completely ignores the conventions of how to tell a story about a Second World War adventure. It takes every orthodoxy about how to dramatise a historical story and walks it through a hall of mirrors. It's irreverent and very, very funny, then it completely blindsides you by having the sort of emotional heart that something that funny has no business having ... It's about a plucky band fighting against the odds and the huge might of the Nazi war machine, and it's told by five people who are the wrong age and mostly the wrong gender for their parts."
I couldn't have loved this more. It's so entirely and completely my kind of thing. I even gave it a standing ovation which is vanishingly rare for me.
[Language] Ablaut reduplication
So this is fun. There's an instinctual rule in English called ablaut reduplication that states that if you have a three word phrase then the vowel order has to be I, A, O. Any other order sounds wrong. If you have two words then it's an I followed by either A or O. For example, mish-mash, chit-chat, dilly-dally, tip-top, hip-hop, flip-flop, tic tac toe, singsong, ding dong, King Kong, ping pong, jibber jabber, TikTok and big bad wolf.
But also, THRILLINGLY for improvisers, Zip Zap Zop.
[Mind] Perception census
This weeks email is all about asking the big questions. And one I've always wondered about is "Is the red that I see the same red as the red you see?" Not a beautifully constructed question I grant you, but fascinating nonetheless. Well, I can now sleep easy, because this wide-ranging perception census aims to find the answer to that and other questions using a crowd-sourced dataset supplied by us - the perceptive public.
Spotlight
A few weeks ago, Katy Schutte and I floated the idea of a intensive 2-day course, taught by both of us. We've had such an amazing response that we're now offering TWO separate versions, one in July and one in October. These workshops will be invite only. If you'd like to apply, fill in this form by 10am on 18th June 2023. Just a few days left to get your application in. How exciting!
Longform thoughts
When did we begin to chain ourselves down?
Improv can be anything.
I get on my high horse in An open letter to all improvisers.
Radio contact
Let me know.