19 NOVEMBER 2025

Hello.

Firstly, a huge thank you to everyone who sent in their improv metaphors last week. I’ve received stories, hand-drawn images, photos, poems, annotated PDF documents - I’m in awe of your creativity. I’m still aiming for 200 metaphors before 31st December so please do keep sending them in. THANK YOU AGAIN, it’s been so brilliant to hear from you all.

Secondly, um … here’s the rest of the newsletter, I guess.

Rule of three

[Album] Lux by Rosalía
I don’t have the musical vocabulary to succinctly delineate what Rosalía is even doing here. All I can say is that it is a constant source of invention, experimentation and joy. Please, sit down and listen to at least the first two tracks - her voice, the power, the refusal to conform to expectations - it’s thrilling.

[App] Snipd
Last week, I went into nerdy detail about my new app, Readwise, that could highlight basically any form of digital media and have those highlights returned to me in daily summaries using spaced repetition. The one medium it couldn’t handle was podcasts. Enter Snipd, it’s an AI-powered podcast player (but the good kind of AI, not the one that’s stealing from artists and punching people) with a killer feature. As you’re listening to your podcast, if someone says something wise or thought-provoking, you simply tap your headphones and it’ll take a note of that moment, transcribe it and send you a list of bite-size summaries at the end of the podcast. These summaries can then be automatically exported into Readwise (or indeed any other note-taking programme you might be using). Brilliant!

[Books] Public domain ebooks
Stumbled upon this wonderful resource - it’s a website that has taken novels that have fallen into the public domain and then lovingly recreated them as beautiful epub files for you to download for free. In my experience, older books have historically had fairly ropey adaptations into digital forms, so to have such care and attention lavished on them is heartening to say the least. And if you’ve never read The Odyssey, Frankenstein, Wuthering Heights or Moby Dick - now’s your chance.

I have not read them either, to be clear.

Spotlight

Still very excited about this month’s Pretend Night on 26th November. We have Pretend co-founder and Showstopper! extraordinaire Ali James teaching a workshop on improv staging and our guests will be the wonderful Improvised Play - this time doing their show inspired by the writer Tony Kushner (of Angels in America fame). It’ll be an evening of beautiful improv - silly and profound. Which is just the way we like it.

Ali James | In the Space
Wanna seem like you’re in the right place at the right time? Join Pretend Company & London 50 Hour Improvathon Director Ali James for a fresh blast of staging technique that will shake up your practice. Get out of your head, grounded, agile and dynamic as you explore being “in the space” in this zingy, fun workshop.

Pretend Night | Lost to Life
Lost to Life is a theatrical improv show about regular people who are just trying to cope with the situations they find themselves in. Inspired by the works of Tony Kushner (Angels in America), but newly made every time. Expect real life and fantasy smashed together, raw and messy emotions, and maybe Meryl Streep - who can say?

With support by the Pretend Ensemble: Ali James, Chris Mead, Liam Webber, Monica Gaga, Rebecca MacMillan and Tara McEntee.

Longform thoughts

If you look at the day’s activities as a string of beads, you will see it’s made up of all different kinds: large, weighty beads and small, carefully painted ones; eye-catching multicoloured ones and unassuming, softly coloured ones … (but) when viewed from the broad perspective of time, all beads are equally important. They’re all pieces of our lives.

Let’s use this beautiful image to talk about creating improv scenes in A string of beads.

Radio contact

Radio Harold Mead in Moonlight Kingdom by Wes Anderson.