With the last triad of months, I finish this recap of the year 2022.
October
The month started with a great Off Stave show at Hoopla’s pre-party before taking a few days off to go attend part of the Sitges International Film Festival. I love horror movies, and this is a festival I’ve been attending throughout the century. The pandemic interrupted 15 consecutive years of travelling to the Catalan coast to enjoy fantastic films with my friends. I was looking forward to it, and it didn’t disappoint. This film festival is one of the constants on my life.
Back in London I was busy with more gigs for Freshwater Theatre, and with the Valencians UK theatre group I was facilitating. With only two actresses, we put together a piece about being an ex-pat in the UK and missing the things from our culture. It was showcased at the end of the month, at Queen Mary’s University, with a dramatised reading of our work preceding the show “El Tocadiscos de Joan Fuster” written by Pau Alabajos. It was a precious evening celebrating our culture through theatre and music.
And I also kept doing shows with Shuffle, not only on Hoopla! but at Shoreditch Balls.
November
This was another of the significant months that this year left me. This was the month that I came back to my Playback Theatre crib, to my community. At the beginning of the month, we celebrated the V Iberian Playback Theatre Gathering in the beautiful Portuguese town of Mértola. I was in the organising team, and also I facilitated a workshop inspired but all the things I’ve learnt from Lisa Lynn during the Acaprov Course and mapping it to the Playback Theatre forms. It was a success. Of course, I performed again with my Iberian family in the gorgeous local theatre. It was as if I had never left. I came back to London thinking that it would be lovely to have a community like that in the UK.
Once back in London, I carried on performances at several schools for Freshwater Theatre and I performed in Phil Lunn’s musical improv course showcase, which went very well.
Talking again about returning, I also returned to Dublin for Improv Fest Ireland. This year the Irish festival returned to its former pre-pandemic self with four days filled with shows and workshops. In my case, I took workshops from Connor Thompson, Mark Sutton, Chris Mead, Ryder Tam and Gabe Valdez. I was there for the whole thing and watched 23 improv shows in four days. The odd number is because I performed in one of them with a mixer team filled with great improvisers from the UK, the USA and, obviously, Ireland. The Irish improv community always makes me feel very welcome, and I’m looking forward to returning next year.
December
A very snowy and improvy month with rehearsals with Off Stave and performances with Shuffle and Not GCSE Drama. A couple of kids asked me for an autograph after a Don Quijote performance at their school which felt both weird and good because that meant they enjoyed my work. I caught up watching a couple of musicals on my bucket list: Les Misérables and Heathers.
I feel very grateful for how I ended this year. Improv, playback theatre, applied theatre… every single aspect of my craft went further, and I feel in a completely different spot from where I was back in 2021.
Here’s to a new year filled with exciting things.