#191 Underlying complexity
Orange. Oura. Ohio. Oh dear!
29 OCTOBER 2025
Hi, everyone.
Hope you had a good week?
Last Sunday, all three Pretend Company cohorts met at the Camden People’s Theatre to play together and create new shows. I got really emotional when I saw just how brilliantly everyone worked together. It was a moment of real clarity and immense gratitude on my part.
What started off as one man calling himself a Company, has now blossomed into a true community of creative practice. Ah, what a world!
(We’re currently taking applications for our 2026 Pretend Company cohort, if you’re interested.)
And talking of dreams coming true, I’ve been asked to play in a show with Craig and Carla Cackowski at the brand new Free Association theatre next Thursday 6th November. Please do come along if you’re free - the Cackowskis are doing their incredible duo show Orange Tuxedo as part of the night’s festivities and their level of craft and improv joy is OFF THE SCALE.
Rule of three
[Tech] Oura ring
As part of my new focus on movement and health, I’ve got myself an Oura ring. It’s basically a finger-worn health tracker which measures things like heart rate, temperature, movement, HRV, blood oxygenation, sleep cycles … and a thousand other things. It takes all this information and hides it behind three easy-to-understand metrics - Activity, Sleep and Readiness. I love the elegance of this approach (although you can obviously tap any of these scores and see all the underlying complexity). With a five day battery life you basically put it on and forget it’s there most of the time. Thus it’s the first sleep tracker I’ve had that doesn’t actively interfere with my sleep by its very presence.
(Although truthfully, I don’t need MORE things interfering with my sleep as Radio has currently taken to sitting on my head at 3am every morning)
[Theatre] Ohio
I saw Ohio by The Bengsons at the Young Vic last week and left utterly shattered. In the best way. The Bengsons are a folk duo who also happen to be married, autistic and, in Shaun’s case, suffering from degenerative hearing loss. This show is a brutal, beautiful meditation on slowly losing something central to your sense of self. And the music is heart-stoppingly precious - bruised, intricate and affecting. The run is over now but I managed to track down this online performance of my favourite song from the show - Cardinals (for Mrs Wean).
[Chaos] Oh, Cooking with Beagles
And from the sublime … to this man trying to cook a pumpkin pie with his dogs helping. FUN FACT: Both this video and the Cardinals one made me cry actual tears. Just in very different ways.
Spotlight
Third week of November, The Pretend Company is delighted to have Brian James O’Connell teaching for us.
This is a big deal. BOC (as most people know him) is an absolute legend of improv. I’ve rarely known such a committed advocate for the art form.
Here are some links so you can get to know him better (he curates and grows these vast, far-reaching archives just so everyone in the global community has access to history and context - it’s pretty remarkable).
All Improv (a text-based resource about improv)
All Improv+ (a video-based resource about improv)
An interview with Brian for the podcast Improvly Speaking.
We are offering two classes with BOC - each priced at £40 for three hours of teaching.
The Deconstruction | 19th November | 6-9pm
The Improvised Movie | 20th November | 6-9pm
Both of these forms are absolute cornerstones of Chicago-style longform improv and Brian learned them FROM the people who created them, so it’s really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity - I personally think The Deconstruction in particular is one of the most fun and rewarding improv forms ever created.
And for readers of this newsletter, I’m offering a bundle that knocks £10 off the price for both days combined. Just go into the Buy Tickets tab and type ALLIMPROV into the box that says Use ticket access code.
Do it now. Thank me later.
Longform thoughts
Every school of improv has it’s own style of play, but it’s only during a bad show that we can see these differences in training. Good improv transcends any attempt to delineate it further.
In this week’s article, I’m thinking about improv school tribalism and what we can all agree on. I’ve called it (somewhat mysteriously) The vaulted ceiling of improv.
Parsnippets
Yes, it’s the other Pretend Pup, Liam’s dog, Parsnip. They grow up so fast.