#97 A panoply of wonderful nerds
Issue #97 A panoply of wonderful nerds
17th January 2024
Hello.
What a lovely day for a newsletter.
Getting back into the swing of it this week with multiple new improv courses starting in London and here in Farnham. I'm also directing a new show with a really incredible cast for Hoopla Impro. You can read more about it in Spotlight below.
I've been off social media for a couple of weeks now and haven't really had the urge to check my feeds. I do feel less connected to the larger improv community - no more discussing the minutiae of improv theory with a panoply of wonderful nerds - but I also feel calmer and more focussed. I've found myself reading more email newsletters (ha!) and this month I've been revisiting old point and click adventure games as research for an upcoming project.
"Look behind you, a three-headed monkey!"
See you next week and remember, make good choices!
Rule of three
[Film] Saltburn
Enjoyed how self-consciously mannered this film was, from the old-school Academy aspect ratio to Barry Keoghan's sketched in Scouse accent. But the artifice is sort of the point - it's a fable - I don't think director Emerald Fennell is at all interested in producing something naturalistic. She just wants to load up a cannon full of glitter, animal masks, eviscerating one-liners and full-on sexual dysfunction and fire it at a bunch of beautiful, young aristocrats. For me, to question the viability of this cautionary tale is akin to asking why Red Riding Hood doesn't recognise the wolf when he's dressed up like her grandmother. It's understandable but sort of beside the point.
Also, it introduced Murder on the Dancefloor to a new generation of TikTokers and I'm all for that.
[Book] Daisy Jones & the Six
I loved everything about this novel, written in the style of one of those An Oral history of... Rolling Stone articles. It's about a fictitious 70s soft rock band and it has a (not so) secret agenda to centre the contribution of women in what would otherwise be a pretty male-centric narrative. The whole thing is fascinating but the ending is perfectly judged and absolutely devastated me, leaving me crying in my bathtub (in a good way).
[Improv] Anxiety Club
My favourite improv team in the UK - Briony Redman, Charlotte Gittins and Lauren Shearing - have a new residency at 2Northdown in King's Cross and I could not be more excited. Each month they'll be joined by a new team of improv greats for Anxiety Club & Friends. Their first night is on Wednesday 7th Feb 2024 at 7.30pm and they'll be on every 2nd Wednesday of the month thereafter. I can't recommend this trio enough, they are the absolute masters of thoughtful, warm, life-affirming improv and all three of them are utterly hilarious. I'll be there to watch as much as is humanly possible.
Spotlight
I'm pleased to announce I'll be directing Scumbags, a new improvised play, for Hoopla Impro.
Here's the blurb:
Sometimes you're up to your knees in a shallow grave and no one tells you to stop digging.
Hoopla Impro presents improvised tales of small town greed, big time dreams and unexpected and yet highly-creative deaths. Based on the works of the Coen Brothers, Scumbags plunges its audience into a seedy underworld of criminals whose ambitions vastly outweigh their ability to deliver on any of those plans.
We're performing 3rd, 10th, 16th & 17th February at The Miller in London Bridge. Tickets are already on sale. Please come along if you can, it really is a stellar cast and we're having lots of fun with the possibilities afforded by our source material.
Longform thoughts
So here's my spiel - creatively, socially and just as a human being who wants to be the very best version of himself - improv has helped me more than any comparable training, study or philosophy.
This week's essay is about Three benefits of improv that I've experienced personally.
Radio contact
Sometimes, Radio is all of us.
BONUS: Here's a short video of Radio being a diva.